We want our students to grow into independent young men who can make correct and ethical decisions for themselves... young men who take responsibility for their own actions.

We are all welcome here. No-one should feel ostracised or belittled because they feel they are not part of this place. We celebrate diversity and differences and work to ensure that these differences are catered for within the life of the College. We are welcoming.

We want our students to become ethical and principled young men. We particularly want them to ‘be marist’ in the way they live their lives .compassionate and ‘outward looking’ rather than self-serving.

We want all members of our college community to ‘be the best that they can be’. This means that ‘excellence’ is a subjective principle. We seek to always provide opportunities for all of our students to achieve the excellence that they are capable of.

The pastoral system at St Patrick’s College can be said to be based on building strong relationships, and fostering a sense of belonging. When things go wrong, we look to understand what has happened and why. Where appropriate we aim to restore the harm done and re-establish respectful relationships. We encourage students to make choices and to take responsibility for their actions – all part of developing the key competency of managing self.

This might take the form of a “Chat” which allows a teacher and student to address a particular issue that is relatively minor (e.g. lateness, ill-equipped, silly comments, off-task etc.) “Chats” may be very brief – 30 seconds – at the end of a lesson perhaps with a similar reminder at the end of the start of the next lesson. They might be a 2-3 minute conversation at the start of a break. The idea is to address the issues one-one in a non-confrontational manner. We persevere with students (patient and quietly relentless). Often a student might require many “chats” or reminders to get them into line and keep them there.

The “Catch-up” is a more formal situation, where the teacher and student will probably need more than 2/3 minutes to address an issue. A teacher will require a student to return for a ‘catch-up’ to:

a) address a student’s attitude or behaviour which is hindering the learning environment of the class or

b) literally catch-up on academic course work that the student has missed due to lateness, not doing homework or not being focussed in class etc. The emphasis on the ‘catch-up’ is a positive outcome for the student, the class and the teacher. The reasons for any issues are addressed, appropriate behaviour/attitude agreed on and/or the student spends time attending to their academic work. A ‘catch-up’ is NOT a detention under another name.

If an issue/behaviour is on-going or serious then a student might be referred to his Dean or the Deputy Rector (Pastoral). Depending on the circumstances parental involvement would be sort quickly as might the involvement of other agencies such as the College counsellors, Learning support and specialist classroom teacher.

Particularly with junior students it might be necessary to defuse a situation by removing that student from the classroom and into the class of another senior teacher/HOD or Dean who is timetabled for that period. This should only occur if the learning of the class as a whole is being disrupted.

Issues around student and staff safety (e.g. violence, substance abuse, bullying), serious defiance or on-going disobedience are passed on directly to Deans, HODs and/or the Deputy Rector (pastoral) and parental involvement will occur quickly.