House & Tutor System

House and Tutor System – Creating a Comprehensive Pastoral System

Wycombe Abbey School Hangzhou focuses on each pupil’s development. We combine the advantages of the headteacher system in Chinese schools and the house and tutor system of overseas schools, providing students with a pastoral care system which is comprehensive, multidimensional and personalised .

Each pupil is part of a house and a tutor group, and each tutor takes charge of 8 to 10 pupils. Working closely with subject teachers, sport coaches and housemasters, tutors focus on the all-round development of pupils. The house system offers children a platform for teamwork, interaction and competition, and also fosters their leadership skills, team spirit and sense of competition. Each house and tutor team is made up of pupils from different year groups, just like the “big families” and “small families” in WASHZ. Older pupils lead by example and take real responsibility as leaders, offering younger pupils advice and support and helping them improve their academic grades on the basis of their past experience; younger pupils learn from their new brothers and sisters, and gradually develop their own life goals. In order to create a truly family atmosphere, the headmaster of WASHZ is a keen advocate of the “Open Door Policy”, regularly joining staff and pupils for lunch or dinner and listening to their concerns, when they come across problems and turn to him for help. WASHZ is not only a place for education, but also our common “home”, where we live and everybody works together to build a happy and effective learning community.

Through our pastoral care system, teaching staff observe, guide and help in the progress made by our pupils in all that they do, offering advice and support for their academic studies, the development of their other interests and key life skills, and their moral education.

In WASHZ, each dormitory building represents one house. A house “parent” and several tutors live in each house together with the pupils. These staff members are also full-time teachers, who work closely with each other, pay attention to the all-round development of pupils and monitor their academic progress and the development of their social skills. By living together with their pupils, tutors can support them in all aspects of their lives, including their schoolwork, hobbies, sports, social interaction, friends and the problems they encounter in life. They can see what natural talents the pupils have and inspire and encourage them to make the most of their gifts.