Student Care and Wellbeing

2022 started with significant changes to the pastoral care system with a house based vertical pastoral system replacing the horizontal year based system that had been in place for a long time.  To support the change, Pastoral Academic Care and Coaching, better known as PACC, was introduced with staff supporting students from Years 7 to 12 with wellbeing, coaching/mentoring and readiness for learning. Some of our senior students relished the opportunity to take on a leadership role providing mentoring and coaching to younger peers and further developing their leadership skills.

Some examples of the activities undertaken in PACC groups included mindfulness tasks, readiness for learning activities, goal setting and review, 1:1 teacher/student coaching, physical activities, learning about the Mercy traditions of the College and lessons from The Resilience Project.

While some of our student found the move to a vertical structure challenging, some recent feedback from students has included:

My experiences about PACC is that my group is kind, respectful, welcoming, caring and loving. I also like my PACC class because I enjoy playing games. I love how kind everyone is and how they help everyone when they are sad, crying, and having a bad day. If I'm being honest, this year with my PACC group was the best experience and made my life full of joy that I was in this PACC class, and that I will be in their PACC class next year.

PACC has been such an amazing experience. PACC has helped me to get along with different types of people and become friends with them and learn a lot from them and their background.

This year PACC has been really fun due to the people in my PACC group. I've enjoyed coming to PACC everyday because it's fun.

PACC groups will continue in 2023 with a continued focus on wellbeing, coaching/mentoring and readiness for learning.