Skip navigation

English Department

The English Department consists of six well-qualified specialist teachers. In the first three years, students follow a varied and challenging curriculum. They will study a broad range of literature, including Shakespeare, in class, as well as honing their writing skills. Weekly reading lessons in the attractive Philip Sawyer Library provide an opportunity to read more widely for pleasure, and to discuss their reading with others.

All students are entered for OCR GCSE English and English Literature. The top set follows an accelerated course, taking GCSE English Literature at the end of Year Ten and then pursuing an internally-examined course Elizabethan and Jacobean England: the Age, the Stage and the Page in Year Eleven, which takes able students well beyond the narrow confines of current examination specifications.

In the last three years, six students have been placed in the top five nationally for their performance in GCSE English Literature.

In the Sixth Form, students may choose to study OCR AS and A-level English Literature. Set texts change periodically – current details are available from the Head of English – but the course always has a particular focus on 20th-century American Prose, as well as including more traditional texts from the canon.

We send a steady stream of students to highly-rated university departments each year to read English – Cambridge, Durham, Leeds, Nottingham, University College, London, Warwick and York have been our most popular destinations over the last three years.

Outside the classroom, we offer a termly programme of theatre trips to students in Year Ten and above. In the Sixth Form, the Literary Society arranges a programme of seminars and lectures by outside speakers. There are also regular opportunities for public speaking, debating, creative writing and journalism. This year, we reached the national finals in the Observer Schools’ Mace debating competition.

The Department has a substantial intranet (available only to current students), providing a range of resources to support independent study, and is keen to develop innovative and exciting teaching methods at all levels within the school.