How does a school
deal with bereavement?
The perspective of
a school chaplain
The National School Chaplains’ Conference,
13-15 June 2013
Note found on room door, Oxford, 1980
Your father’s dead.
Ring home.
The Head Porter
The inevitable and the traumatic
• Boy dies three days after accidentally ingesting rat poison.
• Boy talking to Thames Valley Police on phone kills himself with
shotgun.
• Widowed biology teacher is found dead in bed (heart attack)
by daughter on her eleventh birthday.
• Ex-pupil on gap year killed in car accident (mini hits wall).
• Ex-pupil on gap year killed in car accident (car hits tree).
• Boy hangs himself in his room at school.
• Parent shoots wife and daughter before setting fire to house
and shooting himself.
A suicide at school
Chaplain’s priorities
Questions/Issues
• The whole school
community.
• The housemaster and his
wife.
• The room-mate and his
friends.
• Other boys in the house.
• The matron.
• The headmaster.
• The boy’s sisters and
parents.
• ‘Business as usual’, ‘stop the
clocks’ or a middle way?
• The funeral arrangements.
• Who will manage pastoral care
of the bereaved?
• Awkward questions and
feelings:
– Why did he do it?
– Why didn’t he talk to anybody?
– Could we have done anything
to prevent him?
– What to do with the room in
which he killed himself?
Preparing staff and pupils for the inevitable
(Procedures, relationships and mind set
- institutional and personal)
• RS/PSHE - Death and bereavement and the Problem of Evil
• The School Counsellor
• The Bereavement Group
• Abbey in the Remembrance Season
• School Bereavement Policy (INSET)
• Thoughts for the Day, reflecting on tragedy and disaster
The Bereavement Group
• History – A pupil initiative
• Purpose – Education (breaking the taboo) and
therapeutic value.
• Practice
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–
–
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Tea and cake and comfy sofas.
Confidentiality.
Meeting frequency.
Difficulty of getting pupils to go along the first time.
Silence – the pregnant pause.
Girls are different from boys; emotional literacy.
Abbey – ‘What does your father do?’
A school bereavement policy
• Context
• Guidelines for breaking news about a death of
a pupil or member of staff
• Things to consider in the days following the
news of the death of a pupil
• Information sharing pathway
• Template of a letter informing parents of the
death of a pupil or a member of staff
Bereavement Don'ts
• Don’t think you have to be the person to help a bereaved person.
Their friends may do a better job of providing support.
• Don’t think you have to follow the bereavement policy. Play it by
ear!
• Don’t say ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help’. Do
keep in contact so you know whether there is anything you can do
to help.
• Don’t try to find something positive about the person’s death.
Don’t tell them that ‘everything is going to be alright’ or that
‘everything happens for a reason’.
• Don’t say you know how they feel.
• Don’t say anything that implies a judgment about their feelings.
• Don’t tell them what they should feel or do.
• Don’t change the subject when they mention the person who
died.
• Don’t avoid the bereaved person.
Bereavement Dos - permission and acknowledgement
• Do let your concern be genuine.
• Do be available to listen.
• Do allow them to express as much grief as they are feeling at the moment,
and are willing to share.
• Do encourage them to be patient with themselves, not to expect too much
of themselves, and not to impose any ‘shoulds’ on themselves.
• Do allow them to talk about the person who died, including any negative
feelings they have toward the person who died.
• Do send a condolence card/an anniversary card.
• Do ask bereaved children how they would like teachers to act towards
them.
• Do teach other children to know what to say and how to handle difficult
emotional situations.
• Do allow children to compartmentalize school and home.
• Do make allowances for children who are grieving, though this can be
complicated.
What would you do next?
It is term time. The mother of
two girls in the school suffers a
stroke. She remains in
intensive care in hospital for
nearly two weeks without
regaining consciousness. From
the beginning, the girls have
been told by their father that
the prognosis is good. The
decision is taken to turn off the
life support system.
A pupil, both of whose parents are dead (father from a heart attack,
mother from cancer when he was eleven years old) who is approaching
his GCSEs, is underperforming academically and there have been a series
of disciplinary issues. The boy’s housemaster comes to you for help.
On the school ski trip in the Easter holidays, a pupil has been
found on the floor in her room. She has a head wound, perhaps
incurred in a fall. She is unconscious. An ambulance is called. At
the hospital the doctor assumes she has been drinking. It is
altitude sickness. For 24 hours she remains in a coma. She dies
without regaining consciousness.
It is Saturday morning. A member of staff has a heart
attack while he is teaching. The pupils alert a teacher in
the classroom next door. An ambulance is called. CPR is
done until the paramedics arrive. Despite a speedy
response, the member of staff is pronounced dead on
arrival at hospital.
Useful links
• For those wishing to write their own school bereavement
policy:
http://www.071128_noriordan_sen_sebd_bereavement_poli
cy_schools.doc
• For those looking for lists of bereavement dos and don’ts:
http://www.anemptychair.com/topic-do'sanddon'ts.html