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English

Our ambitious and inclusive curriculum is designed to empower our students to become life-long learners and successful global citizens.

Through a well-sequenced curriculum, we intend to embed knowledge and skills that challenge all learners. We will develop our students' reading, writing, speaking and listening skills, particularly analysis, inference and evaluation, to make them critical readers and powerful communicators who engage effectively with the modern world.

Literacy is at the absolute forefront of the English curriculum, to promote a love of reading, a rich vocabulary and strong disciplinary literacy. Grammar is explicitly taught at Key Stage 3, so that students can utilise this technical knowledge to explore the impact of grammatical choices in Key Stage 4, supporting students to write academically and creatively. 

By exposing our students to a rich variety of engaging and diverse fiction and non-fiction texts, we intend to develop our students cultural capital and prepare them to become aware and responsible members of our community. Students study works by writers such as Malorie Blackman, Khaled Hosseini and Frederick Douglass to Shakespeare. Students develop their understanding of social and historical contexts, bias and prejudice by exploring our themes of Place, Identity and Morality, as part of our enriched and society centred curriculum. 

To raise aspirations and allow our students to make informed decisions about their future, we provide subject specific careers education. Students learn about educational and skill requirements for professions traditionally associated with the study of English Language and Literature such as journalists or lawyers, but we also emphasise the importance of strong reading, writing, speaking and listening skills in all areas of employment, challenging the misconception that this field yields limited career prospects. 

Our Curriculum Maps outline our curriculum design and the development of knowledge and skills from Years 7-11. Students are examined on the AQA Specification in GCSE English Literature and English Language.