John Ruskin College

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Ruskin College is a further education college and former school in the London Borough of Croydon, which started life in 1920 as the John Ruskin Boys' Central School.

The original school was founded as a Central school in Scarbrook Road, Croydon, named after John Ruskin. The author and journalist Malcolm Muggeridge briefly taught at the school several times while a student, where his father, Henry Muggeridge, was Chairman of the Governors.

In 1935 the school moved to Tamworth Road, and in April 1945 it was granted grammar school status as the John Ruskin Grammar School for Boys. It moved to Upper Shirley Road, Shirley, in 1955, and was retitled the John Ruskin High School in 1971 before being demolished in 1991. The upper forms transferred to Selsdon to form the present John Ruskin College.

The College should not be confused with John Ruskin School, which is in Southwark, nor Ruskin College, Oxford.

Feroz Abbasi, a former detainee at Camp X-Ray arrested in Afghanistan, is a former student of the college. The actor and playwright Mick Moore was a pupil at John Ruskin Grammar in the late 1960s, during which time he played Hamlet in an acclaimed school production; he was also a member of the National Youth Theatre.