Pastoral and Academic Structure

The house system, form groups and teaching classes

Houses

All students are placed into one of our two houses - Green or Blue. This provides them with a base where they can go to for support. It also provides two key contact people (a Learning Mentor and Pastoral TA) for both the student and their families, who will be the main points of contact and support throughout their time at school. 

Forms

All students belong to a form group and it will be their form tutor who leads on ensuring that we have the most up-to-date information on our students in terms of their likes, dislikes, communication preferences, and learning styles. We operate a vertical form group system at JPC, with eight groups (four in each house) containing students from each year. Students remain in the same form group during their time with us, although obviously the cohort changes as other students join and leave the school.

Classes

Students are taught in mixed ability classes in all year groups. Students in KS3 remain in the same class for all lessons, while those in KS4 have different classes for options subjects and for maths, science and English, depending on the academic pathway they are following. Unlike form groups, classes change significantly from year to year. This is due to the structure of the school, with one teaching class for Y7/8, two for Y9, three for Y10, and four for Y11. The different number of classes in each year group means that there is always significant change from one year to the next, this is simply unavoidable. In addition, the regular intake of students sometimes results in us being required to change classes mid-year. This will take place when either the mix of students - learning styles, social communication needs, SEND etc. - within a class is simply not working and/or when it becomes necessary in order to ensure that students are able to study their most appropriate/chosen academic pathway.

When creating new classes, all staff contribute their views, and great care is taken to ensure that we have considered everything we know in order to arrive at the best possible classes, which will allow for the best possible learning. This includes the factors described above - learning styles, communication preferences etc. - but also friendship mixes, wherever possible. It is, however, simply impossible to ensure that students will be in classes with their friends. All students and families are reminded that there are three social opportunities during the day - breakfast club, lunchtime and after-school enrichment sessions. It is these sessions that are for friends to meet up socialise, lessons and form times are for learning. 

Please be aware, each year, we receive requests from families to have their child moved into a new group. Often these requests are in direct contradiction to the requests of other families/students. In such a small school, we are simply unable to meet all of these requests and so the only fair and equitable response is to refuse them all. This does not mean that we don’t want to listen to you or your child if they find the changes difficult. We do want to hear any concerns and we will, hopefully, use this as an opportunity to help them improve their resilience to change.