Transforming house culture as a new houseparent
🏷️ From £90
🎧 Deputy Heads, Assistant Heads, Heads of boarding, Houseparents, Assistant houseparents, teaching staff
📍 Online
🎥 Watch live or on catch up
✅ Included in BSA CPD Pass
Course Outline
Taking over a boarding house with a history of challenges can feel overwhelming. This webinar will guide you through the process of driving positive change and reshaping the house culture. Drawing on real-world experience, our speaker will share insights, practical strategies, and proven approaches for leading a struggling or toxic team toward renewal and success.
Participants will gain essential tools to recognise, evaluate, and address toxic dynamics within a team. We will cover effective communication methods, leadership practices, and collaborative techniques that help build a healthier, more cohesive, and productive boarding environment. Whether you are a current houseparent or head of boarding looking to address existing issues, or an aspiring leader preparing for future responsibilities, this session will provide valuable guidance and actionable takeaways.
Learning Outcomes
- Recognise and apply the key elements that define a positive and healthy house culture.
- Develop the confidence and skills to challenge and change harmful or toxic practices.
This event will be held jointly with:
Speaker:
Andrew Day, Deputy Head (Pastoral) at Dover College
An Educational Senior Leader with an extensive background in the UK boarding sector. During his 17 years of living in 4 boys and Co-Ed boarding houses, spanning 3 UK HMC schools, there really isn’t much he hasn’t seen and dealt with.
Boarding houses run on culture, good or bad, it becomes the cornerstone of the house identify. That culture will always be set by the Houseparent – intentionally or not, and you must be on the front foot, it’s your ship.
Failure to acknowledge this and hold it in your thinking through your first year will create a mess with much suffering for everyone, only some of which you will ever know about. Setting, or adjusting, the culture in a house is a delicate manoeuvre requiring EQ, time, tact, tactics, resilience, consistency, candour, and a sense of humour..!
During his first tenure as a Housemaster, buried in paperwork, Andrew Co-Founded an Ed Tech company specialising in boarding and pastoral management: information flow, informed decision making, compliance, and staff workload reduction. Launched at a BSA conference in 2015, the software ultimately generated significantly benefits for boarding staff at various HMC schools.
While working internationally, Andrew held a series of SLT roles leading on: Academic, Pastoral, Co-Curriculum, Staff, Sixth Form, and Admin at whole school levels in premium British schools in China, Singapore, Qatar, and Egypt. Always looking for challenge: startup, crisis, or significant change.
Now back in the UK, Andrew’s extensive experience in implementing complete cultural change across multiple houses will provide an enjoyable and insightful webinar riddled with actionable take-aways.
The session will be a fascinating exploration of taking on your first boarding house, particularly where a change in approach is likely to be required.
