• Hours taught per fortnight (KS3): 8
• Hours taught per fortnight (KS4): 8

The English curriculum aims to develop students as thoughtful, perceptive and analytical readers who can not only understand but critically examine complex ideas and meanings presented in texts. We introduce students to core literary concepts and skills at Key Stage 3, ensuring a breadth of knowledge for all. Each topic includes a range of texts to explore conventions at the root of the concept. Around these texts, we learn the social, political, historical and literary contexts that influence them and, in doing so, we ensure that students are confident in analysing texts as a written form as well as a social commentary. By Key Stage 4, students’ expertise is strengthened through the study of our literary timeline throughout Year 9. We teach beyond the specification and immerse students in ambitious and important texts that will shape them as readers and thinkers of the future. By Years 10 and 11, where the focus is predominantly on the GCSE courses, we aim to develop students’ writing and academic voice, harnessing the belief that their voices, in both writing and speech, has the potential to impact the world in the same way as all of the writers we have studied.