From Belonging to Leadership: Developing Future Leaders at St David's College Case Study

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At Future Action, we believe the most powerful changes in schools begin with relationships.

At St David's College in Llandudno, Ross Williams, Deputy Head of Sixth Form, PE Teacher and Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead, has spent the last 18 months developing an approach to mentoring that places relationships, belonging and psychological safety at its heart.

Ross is a Trauma Informed Schools UK Level 5 Practitioner, and his work has grown from a small mentoring circle into a programme that reached more than 60 young people across every year group during the last academic year.

What makes the story particularly exciting is how the young people themselves have increasingly become part of the solution.

Of the original 20 students involved in Ross's senior mentoring circle, 12 now voluntarily give their own time to mentor younger students.

The Male Mentoring Programme has also developed into an official pastoral intervention at St David's, providing the foundations for Future Leaders, which Ross is now developing in partnership with Future Action.

Recognition

The impact of this work has been recognised beyond St David's College. In 2026, Ross was awarded the Teacher Recognition Award for Contribution to Mainstream Independent Education by the Welsh Independent Schools Council (WISC).

While the award recognised Ross's contribution to mentoring, pastoral development and student wellbeing, he sees it as a reflection of what can happen when schools prioritise relationships, belonging and meaningful opportunities for young people to contribute.

For Ross, the most significant measure of success remains the number of students who choose to support one another and the culture that emerges when young people are trusted to become part of the solution.

This is Ross's story:

Context

When I first started this work, I wasn't trying to create a programme.

I was increasingly conscious of some of the challenges facing boys and young men around identity, relationships, masculinity, social media and the influence of some of the content they were consuming online.

Through my roles in PE, Sixth Form and safeguarding, I was having conversations with young people who were carrying a lot.

What became increasingly clear to me was that another assembly, lesson or adult telling them what they should think was unlikely to be the answer.

Around the same time, I completed the Trauma Informed Schools UK Level 5 Practitioner Diploma.

One of the most powerful elements of that experience was being placed into a small home group.

As someone who has personally found vulnerability difficult at times, experiencing a space where I could be honest, imperfect and vulnerable without fear of judgement had a huge impact on me.

It made me think differently about what we were offering young people in school.

I started with a simple question:

What might happen if we created a consistent space where boys could talk honestly about what it means to be young men, without immediately trying to fix, correct or manage them?

That question became the Male Mentoring Programme.

Intent

My intention was never to create another behaviour intervention.

I wanted to create belonging.

I wanted young people to have somewhere they felt known, valued and able to talk honestly.

My approach is relationship-centred.

I don't believe being trauma-informed means removing boundaries or avoiding difficult conversations. Young people need boundaries and they need challenge.

But I believe we can challenge behaviour while remaining compassionate towards the person.

We can maintain high expectations while creating safety.

We can hold young people accountable without shaming them.

For me, three principles increasingly came to underpin the work:

Safety before challenge.

Regulation before reflection.

Connection before correction.

I wanted the groups to become places where young people could learn to sit with discomfort, listen to perspectives they disagreed with, reflect on their own behaviour and challenge one another without destroying the relationship.

Most importantly, I didn't want vulnerability to become something we demanded from young people.

Vulnerability cannot simply be demanded. It has to become safe.

Implementation

We started small. In the early sessions, conversations often centred on external frustrations. Teachers. Sanctions. Rules. Things that students felt were unfair.

I didn't rush to correct them. We listened. We built relationships. We allowed trust to develop.

Gradually, the conversations began to change. Students became more willing to talk about themselves rather than simply what other people were doing wrong.

We began discussing relationships, emotions, difficult experiences, boundaries, identity and some of the pressures they were experiencing.

Something else began happening too. Students started challenging each other.

But rather than disagreement automatically becoming conflict, they increasingly learned that they could question someone's choices while still supporting them.

Challenge started to feel like care. For some younger students, conversation isn't always the best starting point.

Movement and practical activities have therefore become useful ways of helping young people connect and regulate before expecting them to sit and reflect. Sometimes young people need to move before they're ready to talk.

As the programme developed, older students began taking increasing responsibility.

They started supporting younger students and building relationships across year groups that otherwise probably would never have existed.

Importantly, we are very clear about boundaries. Our student mentors are not counsellors.

They are not responsible for fixing another young person's problems or managing safeguarding disclosures. They learn when to listen, when to support and when something needs to be passed to an appropriate adult.

My safeguarding role has helped us integrate that carefully into the school's existing pastoral and safeguarding structures.

The programme has now become an official pastoral intervention within St David's, allowing appropriate students to be signposted towards groups for their age.

Parents who have approached us with concerns about their sons have also been reassured that this support is available.

Impact

The programme developed organically from practice rather than as a research project, so we don't yet have the formal pre and post evaluation data that I would now like us to collect.

But we do have some really encouraging evidence.

During the last academic year, more than 60 students accessed the programme, which has grown from a single mentoring group to reach every year group in the school.

One of the things I am most proud of is what has happened with our original senior group.

We started with 20 students.

Twelve of those young people now consistently volunteer their own time to mentor younger students.

That's 60% of the original senior cohort choosing to progress from receiving support to helping provide it for somebody else.

Only one student formally withdrew from the programme, and even he continued to access support individually.

For me, that progression from receiving support to wanting to provide it for somebody else is hugely significant.

We've also observed changes in how young people communicate and relate to one another.

Students have become more confident discussing emotions and relationships. We've seen greater empathy, more constructive responses to conflict, healthier boundaries and an increased willingness to challenge peers respectfully while maintaining the relationship.

Colleagues have noticed changes outside the mentoring groups too.

Some of our older mentors appear less defensive and more open when discussing complex subjects. Teachers have noticed more thoughtful conversations around race and immigration in Geography and around gender, identity and differing perspectives in Psychology.

Students seem increasingly willing to listen to a viewpoint they disagree with before responding.

Student Vignette: From Exclusion to Leadership

One young person's journey particularly captures what this work can achieve.

He had a significant history of violence and exclusion and could struggle to express frustration without becoming aggressive.

Over time, he learned to communicate frustration differently and establish healthier boundaries.

Today, he is a trusted mentor to younger students. He has also recently been appointed as a school prefect. That's incredibly powerful for me.

A young person who could once have been defined by violence and exclusion is now trusted to help create safety and belonging for somebody else.

We've seen other students recognise their own patterns of stress, develop healthier coping strategies, navigate difficult relationships, establish boundaries and become more willing to accept support from their peers.

Perhaps the biggest change, though, is the culture that has developed.

Students increasingly hold one another accountable while maintaining relationships.

They can challenge and care at the same time.

Adults create the framework. Students increasingly create the culture.

What Comes Next?

I'm really proud of what has developed at St David's, but I'm also conscious of what we haven't measured yet.

We haven't historically collected systematic pre and post measures around wellbeing, attendance, behaviour or pastoral outcomes because the programme grew organically from practice rather than being established as a research project.

That's something I now want to change.

Through the development of Future Leaders with Future Action, we have an opportunity to take what we've learned at St David's and build a more robust evaluation framework around it.

Future Leaders will allow us to combine the rich qualitative evidence we've seen at St David's with recognised pre and post wellbeing measures, programme data and specific measures around belonging, relationships, confidence and contribution.

That doesn't mean simply taking the St David's programme and copying it into another school.

Every school is different. The exciting question for me is:

What could this look like in your context?

What could happen if we helped more schools create spaces where young people experience belonging, trusted relationships and opportunities to contribute?

And what might happen when some of those young people eventually become the people creating that same sense of belonging for somebody else?

That's where I believe Future Leaders can go next.

Could Future Leaders Work in Your School?

Future Leaders is being developed by Ross Williams and Future Action.

If you're curious about what a similar approach could look like in your school, adapted to your young people, priorities and context, we would love to hear from you.

There is no obligation and no sales pitch. Just an opportunity to have a conversation, learn more about the approach and explore what might be possible.

Book a complimentary, no-obligation conversation with Ross Williams HERE.