How can a form tutor become the key person at school for each student and offer a deeper level of support for everyone?
This year, our school moved to vertical tutoring (VT) as a pastoral system, and for the first time in eight years I have become a form tutor again. Something I will blog about tomorrow. There are many reasons for our school moving towards the system, and if you're not familiar with it, VT is well researched and advocated by Peter A. Barnard. In this post I share a
Sounds sounds fascinating and I am keen to learn more
Great to see! VT is a no brainer when the theme of community is espoused within a schools ethos and values. It offers so many opportunities for young people and staff to develop strong, trusting and lasting relationships. It also lends itself to peer to peer support systems which can effectively act as an additional filter of student’s problems (which, in turn clog up pastoral staff time) but also creates a powerful additional early warning system.
There are many other benefits you are clearly well aware of but it’s important to highlight the easiest win-wins such as transition support, buddying of vulnerable, peer mentoring, study buddies, community activities, …. the list just goes on and on.
Looking forward to updates!
Thanks! I have no idea why all schools are not doing this. It would be interesting to find out more about its flaws.
Assuming you’ve seen this Ross? https://prezi.com/foast6m16dno/understanding-vt-as-systems-thinking/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
Yes. We had Peter Barnard is to lead our VT training.
Hi…there are no flaws! What there is are implementation problems caused by an unwillingness to ask. Training and advice is free but few schools take advantage to learn more especially about the systems thinking and psychology underpinning VT. Schools that mess-up try do so because they ASSUME VT is just mixing up the kids and staff!
I agree. It’s been a great change. One of the best I’ve seen in my career!
Sounds fascinating! I’d certainly be interested to know more.
http://www.verticaltutoring.org
Hi
You shared a post on a website
Assuming you’ve seen this Ross?
Please could I see this link
In process of introducing vertical tutor groups to our school in South Africa. Thank you
Hi Micahel – I took off the link as it was marked as spam and when I clicked, there was a 404 error page. Happy to help with ideas…
I worked in a school with VT, and really enjoyed it. I’m assuming that your school has quite a stable intake numbers, but the only problem we had was related to pupil numbers. In a non-VT school if there are only enough pupils to fill 8 tutor groups instead of the 9 that you’d normally have, that’s what you do, and you then have a ‘spare’ member of staff. Our school’s numbers started going down, but we still had to split the smaller numbers between the VT groups, having 2 or 3 year 7s instead of 4/5. There was no reduction in staff needed (even though we were going through redundancies to make the workforce smaller). This also made the VT unbalanced, and it started to not work as well.
Another thing I also wanted to do with my VT when I had it, was introduce some ‘nurture group’ type activities: toast and juice in the morning around a table talking about what they’d done at the weekend etc. I don’t know if Nurture groups are like Brain Gym that are out of fashion, but some of what they seemed to be teaching were ‘old fashioned family/British values’!
Hope it works really well for you. I certainly enjoyed being a tutor for one!
Really pleased to read this. I am always happy to talk to and advise schools that wish to understand VT is a deeper systems sense. Don’t hesitate to get in touch…most of what I do is free of charge nowadays.
Having always taught in year groups, the idea of VT and the impact on student behaviour really interests me. How have the year leaders, now heads of community found the transition?
They have risen to the challenge!
Hi,
I am not sure if you as the author are still on here and working in a VT school, this being some years on. We have started to have conversations around VT and I have read a lot about them. I love the community element and the idea of developing leadership skills. I just have queries over practicalities such as how you work with Y9 on options choices and keep Y7 engaged in activities at the same time. Do you end up with multiple activities ongoing for the different year groups?
Thanks
I no longer work at the school, but happy to answer any questions you have. Success lies in careful co-tutors aligned with co-tutors for support.