Safeguarding and Pastoral Care Conference 2025 BSC takes lead in Safeguarding and Pastoral Care

Part of the audience

Principal Hannah Wells

Sylvana Marjan

Hans Billimoria

Hannah Edgeworth

The major success of the conference was that the BSC team had partnered with the real experts in the subject of children and their safety and the conference was an  exchange of both national and international knowledge in one platform for a common goal -- safeguarding children

The British School in Colombo (BSC) recently took an inventive step to ensure safety and protection of children with its inaugural “Safeguarding and Pastoral Care Conference 2025”, an event that is planned to be in the school annual calendar.

A phrase new to Sri Lanka’s children related vocabulary, ‘Safeguarding and Pastoral Care’ is a broader term which not only refers to the protection of children but how harms could be prevented.  Very much different to ‘child protection’, the common term used in Sri Lankan context and refers to how we respond to harm, ‘safeguarding’ is very much an umbrella term which refers to how we prevent harm on children. 

“Safeguarding is often referred to as an ‘umbrella’ term which does serve as a useful analogy as the term covers such a wide range of areas. Like actual umbrellas, they keep the holder protected. All the spokes of an umbrella also need to function correctly to work well - if one doesn’t function, full protection is no longer there. You can also now see how useful the analogy is in demonstrating clearly the difference ‘between safeguarding and child protection,” Ms. Hannah Wells, Principal of the BSC who took the initiative to hold first ever Safeguarding and Pastoral Care Conference 2025 addressed the audience which comprised of teachers and representatives from leading international schools in Colombo and the Ladies College and panel of experts who shared their knowledge on the subject. 

“Safeguarding is the policy and practices that a school or organisation follows to keep children and adults safe and promote their well-being. Safeguarding includes procedures such as safer recruitment practices, recognising the signs of abuse, and ensuring that all staff are aware of legislation and safe practices,” the BSC principal explained. 

The initiative is also as a result of the school being a member of the Federation of British International Schools in Asia (FOBISIA) “So because of our membership and because of our approach in terms of safeguarding, we’ve been following UK best practices for nearly ten years. We felt that we wanted to share that best practice with a wider community, and we’d really like to help make schools safer for all students in Sri Lanka,” Ms. Wells explained. 

Experts as partners

The major success of the conference was that the BSC team had partnered with the real experts in the subject of children and their safety and the conference was an  exchange of both national and international knowledge in one platform for a common goal -- safeguarding children. 

With multiple years of experience in working in the field related to safeguarding children,  Hans Billimoria, representing the Grassrooted Trust, an organisation dedicated to promoting sexual and reproductive health, education, and rights in Sri Lanka was one of the key contributors to the conference. 

Joined with him was Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ms. H.W.I.S. Muthumala, Director of the Bureau for the Prevention/Investigation of Abuse of Children and Women who has been daily dealing with real cases related to the topic that was on the podium.

Speaking about the BSC joining with Sri Lankan experts Ms. Sylvana Marjan who initiated the idea spread the much needed safeguarding and pastoral care programme at the BSC said:  “As of last January we’ve been working with the NCPA and we’ve seen all the good work that they actually do. The way they came to school, the way they handled the whole situation and from there how other law enforcement authorities got involved. So we’ve really been supported by these external agencies.”

“If there’s a child who is at risk and we’re really actively taking actions. The action part is really child protection whereas safeguarding is an umbrella term where we say it’s about the policies that we have. The safeguarding policy that we have is the behavioural learning policy, our educational visits policy. How do we make sure that children are actually safe in our environment? It also comes with safer recruitment. When we recruit staff members, do we do our police checks, do we look at expat staff, do we check for their various references? So safeguarding is really everything that we do to prevent and also look after the children. But child protection in itself is for those children who are at risk or who are currently neglected or abused,” Sylvana Marjan who heads  the Safeguarding team of the Senior School explained. 

 “When we talk about safeguarding,  it’s about preventing risk and mitigating risk and child protection is a response to that risk when a child has already been harmed, but it’s also defining what harm is and making sure that we are aligned with the expectation of that as well, as someone who has joined the school community recently,” said Ms.  Hannah Edgeworth, who’s in charge of safeguarding and pastoral care in the Junior school.  

“We are aware that we are working in an international environment and that people may have different interpretations of what harm is based on people’s own lived experience as well;  so it’s also about clarifying and saying harm is X, Y, Z rather than you’re coming with your lived experience and you’re kind of saying,  oh that’s okay, what’s your expectation as a school? So we have that common understanding and we can work as a collective to safeguard everyone in our community as well,” Ms. Edgeworth added. 

Having experienced a successful Safeguarding and Pastoral Care Conference 2025, the BSC team is geared to make it an annual event and even hold it with the participation from not only international schools but even other Sri Lankan schools.