Luke Ramsden (1999, History) has been recognised at the NAPCE Awards 2022 for raising awareness about pastoral care. He was also recently made Chair of Trustees for the Schools Consent Project, a charity dedicated to educating and empowering young people to understand and engage with the issues surrounding consent and sexual assault.

Luke is senior deputy headmaster and senior safeguarding lead at St Benedict’s School in Ealing. He began his teaching career at Tonbridge School where he was head of history and then moved to become a housemaster at Ampleforth College. He was also appointed Acting Head of St Benedict’s Junior School in Michaelmas 2021. This year, he was awarded the Pastoral Leader of the Year award by NAPCE (National Association for Pastoral Care in Education).

The Schools Consent Project provides young people aged 11-18 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland with the skills, confidence and knowledge to make safe, healthy choices around sexual consent. Their volunteers lead workshops around the legal definitions of consent and assault in secondary schools and youth groups.

His nomination read, “In the past 12 months, Luke has played a significant role in raising awareness of pastoral care across the education sector in England and Wales. As one of the leading safeguarding practitioners in the country, Luke has communicated passionately about the subject of pastoral care reaching out to a national audience. He is regularly invited to speak at safeguarding conferences on the subject of pastoral care and has also appeared in webinars, podcasts and roundtable events discussing this topic.

“Luke is passionate about all aspects of the safeguarding and pastoral care of young people. However, his tireless and enthusiastic support of The Schools Consent Project, most recently culminating in his joining our Trustee Board, is remarkable. His informed approach and practical insight have been instrumental in the SCP’s latest development of a full through-school consent curriculum which can be embedded in a wider RSE programme, something we continue to work on this year, trialling it with Luke’s kind and thoughtful support with the students at his school. This in turn will support the wider cultural change that we are all looking to achieve not just in our schools but in society as a whole when approaching the problems of sexual abuse and consent.”

Published: 7 December 2022

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