Head's Welcome
Dear Parents and carers,
At Ludlow Junior School we have created a culture and ethos of care, warmth, support, high expectations and wide ranging opportunities for everyone to grow within, and beyond, our classrooms. Our mission is to ‘Support, Challenge and Inspire’ every member of our school community as they strive to meet personal and wider targets. We see our school as being a place where individuality is celebrated, talents are nurtured and an understanding of our community and the wider world is developed. By joining Ludlow you have decided to embark on an exciting journey we aim to ensure that learning and development is fun, exciting, challenging and personalised.
Coming back to our core mission – to ‘Support, Challenge and Inspire’:
- Support – we know that every pupil, and their family, will need differing levels and types of support at some point during their journey with us. We aim to be really proactive in identifying what types of support are best suited to what situations and this may take the form of academic support, wellbeing support, help with confidence and self image or working through challenges that have arisen in school or beyond
- Challenge – making sure that we can get really personalised challenge evident in all aspects of our provision. This may mean anything from the ‘stretch’ available to the most able in the classroom, the level of challenge and opportunity provided for our most talented sporting stars or performers or just overcoming the challenge of coming the rough the door in the morning. At Ludlow we have high academic outcomes, pride ourselves on nurturing special talents and can reflect on past pupils who have gone on to have celebrated careers
- Inspire – we look to make learning fun and inspiring with teachers and staff looking for the ‘WOW’ factor in our curriculum and the associated learning opportunities. We continue to value trips and visits highly and know that a residential visit makes every child who participates ‘grow’ in many ways. We also look to our pupils and team to inspire us as leaders – what do we need to provide for them in order to see them ‘fly’
Our mission ‘drivers’ of Support, Challenge and Inspire are underpinned by our core values:
- Patience
- Determination
- Friendship
- Pride
- Respect
- Honesty
Our school revolves around these values and we expect to see them reflected in our curriculum, our interactions, relationships and conduct. Whether planning for a maths/English lesson, PE, a sports match or an off site activity we will always come back to our core values to help us plan these experiences. What in each of these experiences will help us all to reflect on, and develop/enhance, our core values?
When working with the whole school, upper school and lower school. Year groups or classes we will often use our core values to help us explore areas such as behaviour, conduct and expectations. They will also form a core structure for praise and rewards with staff celebrating these values when pupils demonstrate them well.
We expect every member of our community to feel safe, secure and valued whilst at Ludlow and we will always come back to our key drivers and our values when we are planning, delivering and evaluating our work. We also want you to feel that these values and drivers are woven through your experience of being a member of our community and will often ask for your feedback and views on what is going well and what can be improved or enhanced.
In school we set the very highest standards for teaching and learning and all staff are involved in a coaching and professional development programme with regular observation, training and support helping them to progress professionally. We aim to be a centre of excellence for specific aspects of teaching and learning and will always expect to host colleagues from other schools/settings who wish to learn from our expertise. All year groups are reviewed at least termly for their key performance indicators and we then provide individualised coaching for staff to help them meet their developmental targets. This ensures that we have a really strong system of continuous improvement in place in order to be always ‘on the front foot’
We very much see being part of Ludlow as a partnership experience where we grow and learn together in order to get the very best for everyone who is involved with us.
Thank you for choosing Ludlow Junior School – we welcome you into a community which aims to ‘Support, Challenge and Inspire’ everyone and where our behaviours will always be informed by pride, honesty, respect, determination, friendship and patience.
Simon Watkins
Executive Headteacher
