What are Pastoral Notes?
Pastoral notes are a way for you to communicate and log well-being notes for an individual student or multiple students.
Pastoral notes are a powerful tool as they allow you to assign a pastoral type and subtype, name the event, provide a description, and add any additional notes. There is also the option to mark a pastoral note as sensitive and to add it to a watchlist. Sensitive notes restrict who can review these notes and the watchlist will add an icon next to your student's name in Orah so it alerts other staff members to the note. Read more from Wikipedia.
Your account will have five default pastoral types/categories available, but you can edit those as needed and/or add additional pastoral types and create subcategories.
☝🏽 Note - School has the ability to choose from 4 names for recording notes - those are Pastoral (default) / Conduct / Behavorial / Well-being - the support articles might have them used interchangeably. It means the same. Read how to change here.
Creating and Updating Pastoral Categories
🧭 Navigate > Homeboard > Admin Console > Student Care (Nurture) > +New Category
or
🧭 Navigate > Homeboard > Student Care (Nurture) > Pastoral > Pastoral Settings > +New Category
Click on the top right buttons to create a new Pastoral Category or a new Subcategory. Use the three lines to the left of the category name to re-order the categories. Use the right side down arrow to view the subcategories and edit them.
To edit a Pastoral Category, click on the pencil icon to the right and complete the form. To edit a Sub-category, click on the three dots to the right to edit.
Category Settings View
Old Category Setting View  | New Category Setting View  |
Options under the new pastoral category settings
Color
Symbol | Category can be assigned a color from set of 12 available colors
Category can be assigned a symbol from set of 39 available icons
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Category Name
| -name the category which will be displayed to staff members while adding behaviour records -add small description for that category for admin purpose  |
Action Field | - an extra field as text box which can be used to write actions taken by staff on the student behaviour for others to know. - action field can be set ON/OFF using the toggle button on the left side. If toggled ON, action button can be set to either required or kept optional for the staff while recording notes.  |
Additional Notes Field | -additional notes is exactly similar to Action field. We have set this field to include any relevant supplementary information. |
Points Field | -point field acts as schools merit demerit system, togging points field ON will allow staff to assign -/+ ve points while recording disciplinary note. Read more about it here. -admins can set a default point value for a particular category and even allow staff to edit the value while recording note.
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Watchlist Option | - enabling watch-list on a note, will add an icon next to your student's name, so it flags other staff members of the event. - a watchlist by default will be off when a staff is recording a note. - a watchlist can have an and end time enabled and will end on the selected date. - to disable watch list simply toggle OFF, staff will not be able to use the watchlist function.
 Same category note recording view for staff 
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Notifications Option | - notifications of the behavioural record can be sent to student, connected contacts and staff members who follow the student. - staff members who follow student will always be notified hence settings here is greyed out.
 View for staff recording note for same category 
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Who can create/view notes ? | - an admin member can specify which staff has access to a particular pastoral/conduct category, it can be either all or specific staff or staff allocated to a house.
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View the staff side of things for pastoral on this article - https://success.orah.com/en/articles/5350471-pastoral-or-conduct-behavioural-wellbeing-notes
Reviewing Pastoral Records
You can view a student's pastoral record history in their student profile. Click into the records section and use the filter to select pastoral. Change the date range to search if you would like.
You can view all recorded pastoral notes from this page or use the export button to download the records into a spreadsheet.
For more detail on a student's pastoral notes and to view their Pastoral Points total, click into the Reports section of the student's profile and ensure that Pastoral Report is selected.
Here you can view a history of recent pastoral records, a pie chart of record types, and the student's total earned pastoral points.
From open sources, find how different school defines merit/demerit system :
- Glen Austin High School - Disciplinary System - Merits & Demerits
- The Riverdale Junior High - uses a demerit system as a positive means
- Academic Charter School - Dr. Lena Edwards
- Curro South Africa - Internal Merit & Demerit System
- Archmere Academy - Points/Demerit System
Pastoral records has a new centralised view, that is all of students' pastoral records in one place. Read more about it here Pastoral / Behavorial Records Overview Page.