Chronicle 687

10 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

The Warden with Ed Adnitt, Risa Kojima and Sheldon Joe-Udofia

we are giving enough support and guidance that issues and problems don’t arise in the first place. We need to have enough people with enough time to be able to get alongside pupils to support them at moments of difficulty. That’s why we appointed Dr Emma Speed-Andrews to be the full-time, resident School Psychologist in 2022 and Sophie Christie to be the School Counsellor in 2023. It’s also why we appointed our own, dedicated School Doctor – Dr Olivia Beardmore is available to pupils all the time, providing the continuity of care which was hard to achieve through our partnership with the NHS. Emma, Sophie and Olivia are all there for pupils when they need help. It’s the wellbeing curriculum that helps them not to need the help in the first place, because it gives them more guidance and more tools to manage their lives at Teddies and beyond school. It now runs from the Shell to the Upper Sixth. It’s overseen by Dr Julia Adlam in the new role of Director of Wellbeing, which we created in 2022, and it covers every aspect of school life, every aspect of teenage life. We created last year the new role of Deputy Head Welfare, and appointed

in the Lower Sixth and Upper Sixth. When you need a closer, smaller community as you settle in, you have it in the Shell. When you need more people to find connections, to share interests, and to make up teams, casts and crews competing and performing at the highest level, you find them in the Sixth Form. We make sure that we don’t just mark festivals and events in British life – we do the same for other countries and cultures too, so that everyone feels included, so that everyone can feel that they belong at Teddies. You have been growing the pastoral team in recent years. What have been the headline developments in this area? It’s definitely true that there are many more people working in pastoral care at Teddies – as there should be. For boarders and for day pupils when they are here, we are taking the place of parents who are there for their children all the time. We’ll never be able to do that completely, but we need to get as close as we can. Our work has been guided by two principles: making sure that we can give enough support when things aren’t going so well, and making sure that

2026. There are approximately 120 teachers, and the capacity of the hall is 960 – which is the limit that we’ve set on the size of our community. It also helps that the year groups grow in size as you go up through the School. Between 130 and 140 in the Shell, between 150 and 160 in the Fourth Form and the Fifth Form, between 190 and 200 Boarding gives you an appreciation of collaboration and teamwork, something useful both in workplace and social settings. You quickly learn the value of different opinions and personalities. OSCAR PINEY, LOWER SIXTH PUPIL