Over the last ten years – and particularly since the pandemic – the complexity of student wellbeing issues in higher education has increased significantly. It became clear to us at the University of Exeter that the traditional model of academic tutoring alone was no longer sufficient to meet the needs of our students.
Like many other higher education institutions, we had long utilised an academic support model where most academic staff were allocated groups of tutees to provide both academic and pastoral support alongside a range of professional services in areas such as welfare, wellbeing, accessibility and financial support. Our review and research into higher education institutions best practice – both in the UK and internationally, and drawing on approaches from schools and further education providers, identified a clear need for dedicated expertise to provide pastoral support at Exeter.
This led to the development of our Pastoral Mentor model, which we began piloting in autumn 2023. By 1 August 2025, we will have rolled out Pastoral Mentors to every department. Our model was described briefly in Wonkhe last year but you can also read more about it in the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. In summary, Pastoral Mentors are dedicated, non-teaching student support staff embedded in departments, serving as a friendly first point of contact for students facing challenges affecting their studies. They proactively reach out to students based on engagement and attainment data, offer a non-judgmental space for conversations, and connect students with specialist support services as needed. Our pastoral mentors work closely with discipline based staff and wider support services to identify the best way to assist students and ensure that the help they need is connected and timely.
Lessons from transformation
While institutions will adopt different approaches to student support, in this piece we reflect on what we’ve learned from implementing institutional change at Exeter, and share the key principles which underpin our model – offering insights we hope will be useful for others working in this space.
Early identification is key. The earlier students identify they are struggling the easier it is to provide support and put remedies in place. Often, the causes of student failure and drop out begin as relatively low-level challenges, but these can escalate over time – non-attendance leads to missed submissions, which in turn result in failed modules, referrals and potentially withdrawal. If we can identify students whose attendance pattern drops early and support them to get back into the classroom, we can mitigate against many of these larger issues.
Data is key to this. All institutions now hold large amounts of data on our students; attendance, engagement with the VLE, submissions, grades. We need to use this to support students and at Exeter we developed a bespoke engagement dashboard to enable us to identify students who might be struggling.
Clear lines of responsibility are vital. It’s no good having access to data if it’s not clear who is going to act on it. Our Pastoral Mentors are responsible for using the engagement dashboard to identify students of concern and do the initial reach out. They then are responsible for linking students who require more specialist support with the correct service, not just telling the student who to contact but in some cases making that contact for them or following up with the student later to ensure they have accessed the support they need. It’s vital that students don’t slip through the net – whether because no one acts on the data or because they fall unnoticed between services.
Clear escalation processes need to be established. It’s critical to have a clear understanding of where one person’s responsibility ends and when a student should be confidently referred to a specialist. We’ve developed well-defined escalation processes so that our Pastoral Mentors don’t feel pressured to take on issues beyond their expertise and remit, and to ensure we make full use of the specialist staff elsewhere in the institution – helping to maintain the integrity of the overall support ecosystem.
Presence is a must. Early feedback from our students’ union and students’ guild highlighted the importance of face-to-face, named support, with students finding it easier to seek help from someone they already know. Our Pastoral Mentors are present in departments, they attend welcome and transition events, informal department gatherings and department social events for students. Students should know who the Pastoral Mentor is before they need help to facilitate that first conversation. As a core part of the education team, Pastoral Mentors also become specialists in the rhythm and challenges of the discipline and can thus provide contextualised support and advice relevant to the students’ programme.
Clarity of message for students is essential. Students are often put off seeking support because they fear disciplinary or fitness to study processes, in particular international students sometimes do not seek support from traditional academic tutors because they do not want to disclose problems to those teaching them or marking their work. Our Pastoral Mentors aim to decouple support from formalised processes around unsatisfactory progress or visa compliance and rather focus on reaching out compassionately, emphasising the importance of a students’ wellbeing and success. Students have reported that this enhanced their sense of belonging and mattering, making it easier to seek support early.
Supporting colleagues through change
Institutional change is never easy and while many staff recognise the need to enhance our student support offer to students, it remains an emotive issue. Some departments embraced the new model from the outset, while others found the transition more difficult. There’s never “enough” evidence, particularly when the change you are implementing is both transformative and innovative.
As academics we often spend a lot of time seeking and compiling evidence to support a theory, but sometimes we have to be brave enough to enact change because it’s the right thing to do and have confidence that we can bring people along over time. If everyone waits for the evidence from others, innovation will never happen. We have found that co-creation is powerful; in order to address the “evidence” challenge, we had to deploy compassion and communication rather than additional data.
We have to meet colleagues where their concerns lie, not t diminish those concerns but to listen to and recognise both the opportunities and risks associated with change. At Exeter, we adopted a phased co-creation model for our Pastoral Mentor approach, being open with departments that we didn’t have all the answers upfront and that we needed to work together to meet students’ needs. Through this iterative approach we were able to take all our departments with us at a pace that suited them and subsequent feedback on the roll out has been overwhelmingly positive.
Student support is an emotive area, and it’s important to recognise existing best practice alongside the benefits of change. While we should acknowledge the great work many have done and continue to do, it is also important to recognise the pressure providing pastoral support can put on colleagues. We were keen to ensure that specialising support wasn’t seen as a criticism but a way to relieve pressure on colleagues and ensure more sustainable support for our whole community.
