INFORMATION TO AND FROM SCHOOL
Letters are sent home frequently. However, children make bad postmen, so please contact the school if in doubt about anything.
It is essential that the school knows:-
- Where to contact either parent during working hours
- The name, address and telephone number of a relative or friend
- The name of your family doctor
- Anything which might affect urgent medical treatment for your child.
We frequently find our records are out of date. Please let us know if any of these items change. Please contact either the class teacher or the head teacher, in confidence, over any problems which might affect your children.
We keep a copy of each circular letter sent home in a file which is placed in the Entrance Hall. Please look at this if your child has been away or you feel that you might have missed a letter.
SCHOOL AIMS
To maintain a caring community in which each child and adult feels valued and which encourages parents to become fully involved, thereby reinforcing its family atmosphere.
To provide a broad, balanced and relevant education in a stimulating, secure, safe and happy environment, actively promoting the Aims of the National Curriculum. We fully recognise the need to:
- Encourage independent learning
- Help children understand concepts underlying factual information
- Develop problem solving skills
- Promote the ability to acquire information from a variety of sources and use it effectively
- Encourage each child to discover and develop to their own potential in every field, in the pursuit of excellence.
To set high standards of self-discipline and behaviour so that children can develop a sense of self-respect and the capacity to realise their responsibilities as well as their rights in society.
To encourage respect for religious, moral and spiritual values, having tolerance and understanding of other cultures, creed and ways of life, and to care for each other.
To help pupils understand and use linguistic, mathematical, scientific and technical concepts and conventions effectively.
To help pupils acquire concepts, knowledge and skills relevant to adult life and employment in a fast changing technological world.
To help pupils to understand and respect the world in which they live and appreciate the concepts of time and space.
To develop aesthetic appreciation of art, music, literature, drama and movement and to encourage self-expression in these media.
To encourage the acquisition of practical skills and dexterity and develop the ability to apply them successfully.
To encourage each child to experience a wide range of sports, games and leisure activities with a view to developing a sense of competition, sportsmanship and team spirit, and to provide a basis for the constructive use of leisure time in later life.
INFORMATION ABOUT ADMISSIONS
We maintain a close contact with Beechcroft to ensure that your child’s transfer at every stage of his/her education proceeds as smoothly as possible.
Year Three staff visit Beechcroft to meet your child and his/her teachers in the summer term before moving to Ruskin. Your child will also visit this school for two days in the summer term to meet the class teacher and to experience life at Ruskin. We try to make this visit as relaxed as possible and encourage the children to ask questions.
Parents will be invited to a meeting prior to the children’s visit. You will have the opportunity to meet your child’s new teacher and to view the school building and its facilities. Should you wish to discuss any matter in confidence, please make an appointment with Miss Cook.
Admissions Policy
Ruskin is a popular school and as such parents of children living outside our designated catchment area often request that their children attend here. Any child living within the designated area is automatically granted a place at Ruskin and any child attending Beechcroft Infants will also be guaranteed a place in our Year 3. Children from "out of area" will be admitted only if there is space in the year group concerned.
Secondary Transfer
Transfer to secondary school takes place at the end of the school year in which a child attains his eleventh birthday. Children from Ruskin normally transfer to:-
Kingsdown Comprehensive School
Hyde Road
Stratton St. Margaret
Swindon
SN2 6SJ
Again you will have the opportunity to meet Mr. Williams, the Head Teacher, and your child will visit Kingsdown for two full days when they will follow a secondary school time-table and be taught by some of their new teachers before they leave Ruskin. Other Secondary schools that children have transferred to recently include St. Joseph’s RC and Headlands, Warneford and Churchfields