This study explores the potential of adopting a whole-school approach to the pastoral care module in a Postgraduate Certificate of Education Programme to ensure that all newly qualified teachers practice effective pastoral care in their classrooms and promote the learners' academic engagement and performance. A non-experimental survey research design involving quantitative data was used. A group-administered questionnaire was used to collect the sampled student teachers' (n =?59) opinion on the competencies they obtain from the module. The student teachers ranked knowledge first, beliefs and values second and skills third. For the student teachers to perform their academic and pastoral roles constructively together in a challenged education system, it is recommended that, in the short term, a learning unit, which is grounded in Best's needs-focused model of pastoral care, be included in the module; and, in the long term, given the context of the South African schooling system, the nurturer professional model of teacher education be implemented. This article reports the outcomes of a follow-up study of an earlier preliminary study.