Pastoral Care

At Ruyton there is a sense of belonging to a community, where teachers, girls and their families work together and value each other. Self-esteem and confidence are fundamental to each girl's personal, social and academic success.

The size of Ruyton makes it possible for each girl to be acknowledged and valued and for her individual needs to be supported. Class Teachers, Level Co-Ordinators, School Counsellor and Careers Counsellor work together to monitor and support each girl, in close consultation with the Heads of Junior and Senior Schools.

Meticulous, well-devised procedures are firmly in place to support this process. The girls also benefit significantly from the wide-ranging network of past Ruytonians who are pleased to act as mentors in advising career paths for current students. This complements the Work Experience opportunities provided for our girls.

Cybersafety

Parents and schools have long been aware of the problems of so-called ‘school-yard bullying’. Also of growing concern, is the issue of cyber-bullying, via email, SMS, chat rooms, mobile phone cameras, blogs and websites. Cyberbullying, like conventional bullying, can cause psychological and emotional damage. The relative anonymity of the technology means that users often feel they can say what they like or pretend to be someone else. It has the added menace of being able to be disseminated to large numbers of people and can be hard to trace.

What is cyberbullying?

The following behaviours constitute cyberbullying:

• sending offensive messages, jokes or cartoons to a person
• sending offensive messages about a person to a group
• sending threats
• making malicious fun of others
• sending or posting insulting, untrue or cruel messages about someone
• sending vulgar, embarrassing or private photos
• sending or posting personal, embarrassing or private information about a person or their family revealing secrets or spreading gossip excluding someone from an online group
• pretending to be a friend to extract personal information and then making it public
• telling sexual information, true or not
• pretending to be someone else and sending messages that negatively rebound on that person
• sending emails in the name of someone else.

What can parents do if a child is being cyberbullied?

• obtain and save the evidence
• block unwanted contacts and messages
• make sure your child does not reply, as a return message will encourage the sender
• contact phone company or notify website
• remember that false names and borrowed passwords can cover the sender’s identity.

At a school level, cyberbullying is regarded as a serious offence and dealt with according to Ruyton’s anti-bullying policy and acceptable electronic usages policy.