ARTICLES
Queen Ethelburga’s Collegiate in York is home to approximately 340 Forces students on a campus of around 1300 students.
As Principal, Dan Machin, states, “With military children representing a quarter of the student population onsite, it is crucial for our school to be a home away from home, with excellent forces-specific support across academics, pastoral and boarding for the many additional challenges faced by our Forces students.”
Forces students, like every student on campus, can approach Pastoral Coordinators, House Parents, Teachers, Form Tutors, Student Wellbeing and Welfare Ambassadors, Prefects, Senior Managers who are trained in mental health first aid, our School Counsellor who is a trained therapist, or our onsite General Practitioner. They can also approach an Independent Listener who is not associated with the school. In addition, military children can access additional support provided by our Forces Liaison Officers who are trained specifically to identify and support the additional needs of our Forces students including separation anxiety, worries surrounding parent deployments and issues arising from moving around a lot. Within our Pastoral and Forces Liaison Teams, we have both ex-military personnel and staff who were once themselves military children, who can use their personal experiences to best assist our Forces students with their individual circumstances.
Our community supports military children through events and activities. Our CCF host our own Remembrance Parade onsite, and our pastoral centre offers a variety of activities around being a military child. Recently, we have run various activities for the Month of the Military Child including writing letters home from QE as if we are the WW2 front-line trenches. In this activity, the children were encouraged to write or draw their daily experiences on tea-stained letters before ‘sending it home’ to loved ones.
As our recent ISI Inspection report states, 'Pupils feel they are part of a community' and many of our students wear a variety of community and responsibility pin badges. Soon, we hope to introduce a QE pin badge for Forces students which we hope will foster a sense of pride and community amongst our Forces students'.
To find out more about Forces support at QE, visit www.qe.org.