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7

Abingdon

News

The soundtrack to my youth was Britpop

rather than Gershwin or the Beatles, but

my experiences growing up were much

the same as those of my parents or

grandparents. When I look at my teenaged

son on Instagram, texting, downloading

apps and gaming, I don’t think the same

can be said for his generation.

Teenage years have always been fraught.

It’s a time when everyone is self-conscious

and this is exacerbated for today’s

children. As well as the stress of living

through adolescence, they are required to

virtually record every moment. Teenagers

have always wanted to appear “in”, so

imagine how much greater this pressure is

when the snapshots of your daily life have

to be constantly uploaded to Snapchat.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, most

of our lives are pretty mundane: going to

school, watching TV, having supper, being

ordinary - which all looks very dull on

Facebook or WhatsApp.

There is pressure on teenagers to

sensationalise their lives: it’s not enough

to have a good time, you have to be seen

to be having an amazing time, and the

flipside is that if life is dull, then the world

has to be abysmal, and the unspoken

influence is that the mildly disappointing is

transformed into depression.

No wonder mental health issues are on the

rise. This is made worse by the increase in

the sexualisation of the male body image

so that boys are now experiencing what

girls have had to face for years. Boys

want to look perfect. Academically, the

expectation is also perfection: you work

hard, get good grades, only for the media

to inform you that the success is due to

grade inflation, not your efforts. Your future

seems to hang in the balance at an early

age with perfection being the only goal.

So how do we counter this trend

at Abingdon to support and

protect our boys?

Central to this is understanding that

everyone is different, and success,

happiness, wellbeing, can take lots

of different forms. It is important that

there is not a “type” to which the boys

must conform, but instead we celebrate

and revel in differences, in terms of

backgrounds, ethnicity, interests and skills.

This is why our Other Half programme is

so important.

School should be a place where you can

explore something new and challenging,

safe in the knowledge that disappointment

might follow but that there is a support

network there to help you. As the story

of almost every entrepreneur will show,

learning to fail and how to then bounce

back is an invaluable life skill.

Pastoral care is paramount. In those

crucial adolescent years our tutor to pupil

ratio is 1:10 or less. Boys see their tutors

every day so they know the boys very well

and can quickly pick up on something

amiss. PSHCE is timetabled and thorny

issues are openly discussed. We have

four counsellors in school enabling boys

to find support outside of the teaching

staff if they want to. Boys know it is OK to

find life difficult and to ask for help: they

don’t have to “man up”. Finally there is

peer support. Older boys mentor younger

boys, prefects are trained how to listen,

pupils are encouraged to raise concerns,

and everyone is taught that the root to real

wellbeing is to reach out to others.

To return to my Britpop past, Blur famously

claimed: “There’s no other way/All that you

can do/Is watch them play.” At Abingdon

we feel it is crucial to give our pupils the

freedom to “play”, but we know that

“watching” them also includes picking

them up when they stumble or fall.

Pastoral Care

by Deputy Head (Pastoral) Mark Hindley