Building back better in 2022 – with a renewed focus on pastoral care, emotional health and wellbeing for all

At the time of writing, despite a warning from the head of the World Health Organisation that the coronavirus pandemic is ‘nowhere near over’ (BBC News, 2022), many countries are beginning to ease their Covid-19 restrictions, a sign perhaps of a cautiously optimistic beginning to 2022. While there remains much uncertainty about the future, it does seem opportune at the start of this new year to reflect on what has come before but also to look forward to brighter times ahead, and to consider what it means to ‘build back better’. It goes without saying that over the past two years we have all endured a once-in-a-generation crisis which has impacted on all aspects of our lives and exacerbated many existing inequalities in our society (Social Mobility Commission, 2021). A recent report by UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank (2021) notes that the global disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic constitutes ‘the worst education crisis on record’ (p. 4). Importantly, however, the report stresses that, as well as addressing learning losses, it must be a priority to support re-opened schools across the world to provide comprehensive services promoting wellbeing and psychosocial support (p. 7) and to address the ‘crisis within a crisis’ (p. 26) of child and youth mental health.

Our recent special issue (Pastoral Care in Education, Volume 39, issue 3) on the theme of ‘A pedagogy of love and care in the time of Covid-19’ highlighted both the reality of personal suffering (e.g. Westendorff et al., 2021) but also the often invisible and uncelebrated ‘labour of love’ of teachers across the world (Poncela et al., 2021) as they sought to support children and young people at considerable emotional, social, material and political cost to themselves. As we look forward, let us not simply return to how things were before the pandemic, but instead let us, as pastoral educators, urge our leaders (at local and national level) to put children’s pastoral care, emotional health and wellbeing at the very centre of our educational and budgetary plans for the future. As we emerge from two years of massive upheaval we cannot forget or allow others to forget one of the biggest lessons from the pandemic: that schools need to address the wellbeing of their students and teachers rather than simply focusing on effective teaching and learning.

In the opening article of this issue, Tania Hart and Michelle O’Reilly present an important study of what schools and mental health services can do to address the bullying of adolescents with severe emotional health conditions, based on semi-structured interviews with 14–16 year olds in England with a clinical diagnosis of an emotional health condition (voices which are rarely heard in existing research), as well as their parents and teachers.

Moving continent to South Africa, in the second article, Melanie Moen explores South African primary school foundation teachers’ perspectives on the factors contributing to childhood adversity, drawing on the views of a sample of 135 teachers across six different provinces. The findings highlight that the highest ranking adversity identified in the teachers’ responses was the impact of parental divorce on the well-being of the children. As Moen notes, this is perhaps surprising, given other major adversities such as poverty, crime and HIV/AIDS, but serves as a useful reminder of the importance of the home environment and the important role that pastoral teachers play in children’s lives.

An innovative Portuguese community intervention project promoting the social and educational inclusion of children and young people from social housing estates (to reduce ‘inevitable trajectories’ including school dropout) provides the focus for Raquel Rodrigues, José Pedro Amorim and Tiago Neves. In examining the Study Support activities of the Cravo Project in particular, the authors find evidence of the importance of the affective and emotional dimensions, positive relationships and high expectations, but also highlight the significance of the ‘bridge’ between the school and the family provided by the project.

Solrun Samnøy, Miranda Thurston, Bente Wold, Eirik Sørnes Jenssen and Hege Eikeland Tjomsland also explore the complex and challenging role of teachers in fostering student wellbeing. Their qualitative exploration with 23 Norwegian teachers found strong support for the pastoral role of teachers within a positive, inclusive school climate, yet identified growing concerns amid the increasing pressure on students (and teachers) in recent years to achieve high academic standards. The resulting tensions and dilemmas, and the challenges to their pastoral philosophies experienced by these Norwegian teachers will be sadly familiar to many of our international readers.

The fifth article in this issue presents an initial examination of school counselling use during a 5-week remote learning period during the Covid-19 pandemic (April-May 2020) in one large Australian coeducational, day- and boarding-school. Matt O’Connor presents surprising results which suggest an overall decrease in the number of students who availed of counselling and an overall decrease in the number of sessions provided during 2020.

Returning to the northern hemisphere, Fiona Templeton, Anne McGlade and Lelia Fitzsimons reveal important insights into the school perspectives of adopted young people aged 16–21 in Northern Ireland. The authors note that adopted children too often represent an ‘invisible population’ compared to looked after children, overlooked in policy and practice, frequently based on the false assumption that an adoption represents a panacea for childhood adversity. Enduring challenges faced in terms of schooling are powerfully elicited from interviews with nine adopted young people, who also identify the most supportive schools as characterized by the presence of trust, good communication and empathic, informed and emotionally available staff.

In the seventh and final article in this issue, Catherine Stapleton explores how the identity development of post-primary students of minority faith or worldview is impacted by attending a school with a Catholic ethos. The study is set against the context of significant ‘societal flux’ and reduced religious affiliation experienced in recent years in the Republic of Ireland. Stapleton suggests that many post-primary students of minority religious faiths (or none) may be struggling to find a secure identity amid reports of stereotyping and othering, and argues that the traditionally Catholic education system in Ireland needs to accept and communicate more effectively with the increasingly pluralist community inside and outside the school gates.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).