The Swaminarayan School

Since its founding in September 1992 by His Holiness Pramukh Swami Maharaj, The Swaminarayan School has continued to deliver a very high standard of education. With an extraordinary array of subjects and activities tailored to meet pupils’ interests and abilities, we are always striving to improve our pupils’ learning experiences. Our strong family ethos ensures that our broad curriculum approach provides our pupils with a supportive environment in which to learn. We especially emphasise inculcating in the children such core values as respect, honesty, teamwork, humility and friendliness.

Our pupils' horizons are widened by providing opportunities to travel out of school for residential trips, day trips and sporting fixtures. The school provides opportunities to instil confidence through lessons and activities such as LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts) and public speaking. Students are also afforded chances to partake in a wide range of lunchtime and after-school clubs.

The Prep School has received many accolades, such as the NACE Challenge Award for Provision for More Able, Gifted and Talented (MAGT) pupils, the Primary Science Quality Mark Award, the Thinking Schools Award, and we have also gained Healthy School and Eco School status.

This prospectus encapsulates some of the many activities and initiatives in which children participate. The Hindu ethos and values permeate daily life at our school, and the children experience joy, learning, challenges and satisfaction each day. Academically, the Prep School pupils excel in many subjects. We firmly believe in the philosophy of holistic education, which leads to the development of a child who is equipped with life-long learning skills.

At the Swaminarayan Prep School we have 5 core values that we promote during school life both in and out of the classroom, and that our children demonstrate in all aspects of school life.

• Respect
• Humility
• Honest
• Friendliness
• Teamwork

The Swaminarayan School seeks to support their pupils by offering an engaging, diverse and balanced curriculum that caters to the pupils’ ages, abilities and aptitudes. As part of the Independent Schools Association, The Swaminarayan School values its ability to develop a curriculum, educational best practices and the National curriculum to inform its decisions.

Our curriculum includes numerous extra-curricular activities in order to enrich the children’s experience as well as the ‘hidden curriculum’ – what the children learn from the way they are treated and expected to behave. Our curriculum is all the planned activities, which we arrange, to promote learning and that enable personal growth and development. We want children to grow into imaginative, independent, responsible people who can work and co-operate with others, while at the same time developing their knowledge and skills in order to become lifelong learners. Accordingly, The Swaminarayan School provides an educational environment which is caring, friendly, well-structured, positive and academically challenging to each individual pupil.

Our school curriculum is underpinned by the values that we hold dear at our school. The curriculum is the means by which the school achieves its objective of educating children in the knowledge, skills and understanding that they need in order to lead fulfilling lives.

The Swaminarayan School, as an independent school, has chosen to offer a curriculum based upon aspects of the National Curriculum best suited to us while also giving pupils the opportunity to develop their religious, cultural, spiritual and moral potential.

OUR VALUES: These are the main values of our school, upon which we have based our curriculum.

• We value the way in which all children are unique, and our curriculum promotes respect for the views of each individual child, as well as for people of all cultures. We value the spiritual and moral development of each person, as well as their intellectual and physical growth.
• We value the importance of each person in our community. We organise our curriculum so that we promote co-operation and understanding between all members of our community.
• We value our environment, and we aim, through our curriculum, to teach respect for our world, and how we should care for it for future generations, as well as our own.

The overall aims of our school are:

• To promote our Hindu culture, values and way of life.
• To enable pupils to become “lifelong learners” who are lively, imaginative, enquiring, confident, independent, and display self-esteem and self-discipline.
• To continue to raise our academic standards by having high expectations of teaching and learning.
• To give our pupils an opportunity to take part in a wide range of extra-curricular activities, performing arts and cultural experiences so that they become good citizens of the country.
• To send well-adjusted and well-rounded young people to higher education.
• To instil a sense of concern, awe and wonder about the world within our pupils and establish strong links with the parents, Mandir, and the wider community.

The objectives of our school curriculum are:

• To enable all children to learn and develop their skills to the best of their ability
• To promote a positive attitude towards learning, so that children enjoy coming to school, and acquire a solid basis for lifelong learning
• To teach children the basic skills of literacy, numeracy and information technology (IT)
• To ensure that each pupil will have the opportunity to learn
• To read fluently, with understanding, feeling, discrimination and enjoyment a variety of materials written in different ways for different purposes
• To help children understand Britain’s cultural heritage
• To enable children to be positive and responsible citizens
• To deliver a curriculum based on the relevant aspects of the National Curriculum but with adaptations where we deem it necessary and including our own cultural subjects
• To teach children to have an awareness of their own spiritual development, and to understand right from wrong
• To help children understand the importance of truth and fairness, so that they grow up committed to equal opportunities for all
• To enable children to have respect for themselves and high self-esteem, and to be able to live and work co-operatively with others