BSC Pioneers Pastoral Care
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Amidst the backdrop where there are record numbers of children studying in both local and international educational institutes, going through a severe psychological pressure due to various challenges they are going through, British School in Colombo (BSC) recently held its first Safeguarding and Pastoral Care Conference to help, support and save the treasure of tomorrow.
Held in partnership with representatives from leading international schools in Colombo and Ladies’ College, Colombo, the inaugural Safeguarding and Pastoral Care Conference 2025 was a major success, enlightening teachers and educators on many areas that require protection for childre
Hannah Wells - Principal
With years of experience in working in the related field, experts including Hans Billimoria, representing the Grassrooted Trust, an organisation dedicated to promoting sexual and reproductive health, education, and rights in Sri Lanka and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ms. H.W.I.S. Muthumala, Director of the Bureau for the Prevention/Investigation of Abuse of Children and Women shared their first hand experiences and knowledge at the full-day workshop held at the BSC premises.
“So because of our membership with the Federation of British International Schools in Asia (FOBISIA) and because of our approach in terms of safeguarding, so we’ve been following UK best practices for nearly ten years. We felt that we wanted to share that best practice with a wider community, and we’d really like to help make schools safer for all students in Sri Lanka,” Ms. Hannah Wells, Principal of the BSC stated, describing the background for initiating such a conference in Sri Lanka.
“Because of our understanding and because we’ve been to conferences with these British schools across Asia, it’s demonstrated to us the power of that sharing of best practice, and also the key things that are coming up that are common across all the schools, and it’s helped us really connect together and try and solve those problems together,” she noted.
“We have been regular attendees of the FOBISIA Safeguarding and Pastoral Care conference since May 2023, where schools all across Asia come together to share ideas, strategy and best practice. It has also offered invaluable insight into the common areas of challenge being faced by young people across the region and has allowed practitioners to work together on how to best tackle these in schools.”
Ms Hannah Edgeworth
“Safeguarding is the policy and practices that a school or organisation follows to keep children and adults safe and promote their well-being. Safeguarding includes procedures such as safer recruitment practices, recognising the signs of abuse, and ensuring that all staff are aware of legislation and safe practices,” the BSC principal explained.
“These are the years when the so-called play-based childhood ended and the phone-based childhood began. Jonathan Haidt, best known for his publication, “The Anxious Generation” attributes this huge rise to children having what he calls a ‘phone-based childhood’ as well as the over protective nature of our parenting these days. If you read his book, the argument Haidt makes is compelling and very hard to ignore. The OECD included climate anxiety, economic and global uncertainty and the problematic use of social media in their own findings,” Ms. Wells with her enormous experience working in the educational institutes in the United Kingdom and the overseas, said.
With the aim to promote safeguarding and pastoral care not only in their own school but in the Sri Lankan education system, the BSC has created a team led by Ms. Sylvana Marjan who initiated the idea and spread the much-needed safeguarding and pastoral care programme.
While protecting children from all vices and dangers refers to ‘child protection’, ‘safeguarding and pastoral care’ refers much wider and broader idea and it is an entire process that ensures that every child is protected and safer in an environment where adults are educated on safeguarding and pastoral care.
“If there’s a child who is at risk and we’re really actively taking actions. The action part is really child protection whereas safeguarding is an umbrella term where we say it’s about the policies that we have. The safeguarding policies that we have are the behavioural learning policy, our educational visits policy. How do we make sure that children are actually safe in our environment? It also comes with safer recruitment. When we recruit staff members, do we do our police checks, do we look at expat staff, do we check for their various references? So safeguarding is really everything that we do to prevent and also look after the children. But child protection in itself is for those children who are at risk or who are currently neglected or abused,” Sylvana Marjan who is head of the Safeguarding team of the Senior School, explained.
Sylvana Marjan
“When we talk about safeguarding it’s about preventing risk and mitigating risk and child protection is a response to that risk when a child has already been harmed, but it’s also defining what harm is and making sure that we are aligned with the expectation of that as well, as someone who has joined the school community recently,” Ms. Hannah Edgeworth, who in charge of safeguarding and pastoral care in the Junior school added.
“We are aware that we are working in an international environment and that people may have different interpretations of what harm is based on people’s own lived experience as well so it’s also about clarifying and saying harm is X, Y, Z rather than you’re coming with your lived experience and you’re kind of saying oh that’s okay, what’s your expectation as a school, so we have that common understanding and we can work as a collective to safeguard everyone in our community as well,” Ms. Edgeworth stated.
With the immense success of the Safeguarding and Pastoral Care Conference 2025, the BSC is planning to continue the programme annually, inviting more schools from both international and national levels.
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