Our English curriculum develops confident, articulate and thoughtful communicators who can read, write and speak with clarity and purpose. Pupils explore a rich range of literature and texts that broaden cultural understanding and deepen empathy.
Learning is sequenced so that pupils build secure knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, literary forms and rhetoric. Through explicit teaching, modelling and purposeful practice, pupils learn to express increasingly complex ideas through reading, writing and spoken language, adapting their communication for different audiences and purposes.
We aim to ensure ambition for all regardless of background or starting points and remove barriers so that every pupil can access high-quality English learning. Through English, pupils are encouraged to reflect on human experience with insight and compassion, demonstrating hope, wisdom and respect, and to develop a love of language that equips them to soar to the heights together.
Disciplinary Thinking in English
Pupils are taught to think as readers, writers, speakers and critics. This involves:
- interpreting meaning beyond the literal
- selecting and testing textual evidence
- analysing how writers use language, structure and form
- developing and refining interpretations
- considering alternative perspectives
- comparing ideas, methods and viewpoints
- evaluating the effectiveness and significance of writers’ choices
- constructing coherent written and spoken arguments using evidence
These disciplinary practices are explicitly taught, sequenced and revisited across the curriculum in increasingly complex contexts.
Key Areas (threaded throughout):
| Character & Perspective | Theme & Big Ideas | Writer’s Methods | Voice, Purpose & Audience | Evaluation & Judgement |
| How writers shape characters, viewpoints and reader response. | How texts explore identity, morality, power, conflict and society. | How writers use language, structure, form and rhetorical choices to shape meaning. | How writers and speakers shape voice, register and viewpoint for different audiences and purposes. | Testing interpretations, comparing perspectives and forming evidence-based judgements. |
| Concept | Year 7 | Year 8 | Year 9 | KS4 |
| Character & Perspective | Explain how character and viewpoint are established through textual evidence. | Analyse how perspective shapes meaning and reader response. | Explore competing perspectives, reliability and bias. | Develop and defend critical interpretations of character and viewpoint. |
| Theme & Big Ideas | Recognise and explain recurring ideas within and across texts. | Track how themes develop through character, events and structural patterns. | Interpret how texts explore complex ideas and values. | Develop conceptual arguments and consider alternative thematic interpretations. |
| Writer’s Methods | Explain how specific choices in language, structure and form contribute to meaning. | Analyse patterns of methods and their effects across a text. | Evaluate how methods support interpretations and communicate wider ideas. | Select, connect and evaluate methods as part of a sustained critical argument. |
| Voice, Purpose & Audience | Identify viewpoint and explain how communication is shaped for an audience. | Analyse how language, tone and register shape response. | Evaluate how writers and speakers construct and position viewpoints. | Adapt written and spoken communication precisely for audience, purpose and form. |
| Evaluation & Judgement | Form a clear judgement supported by relevant evidence. | Develop and justify judgements, considering different possibilities. | Sustain an evaluation and respond to alternative interpretations. | Construct nuanced, evidence-based judgements independently and under timed conditions. |
DEEP Curriculum Overview
In our five-year DEEP English curriculum, pupils review and extend their own strategies for locating, appraising and extracting relevant information. They develop their ability to analyse the social, historical and cultural context, explaining their significance and relevance over time and learn to evaluate their own critical writing about texts. Pupils develop their ability to write for a range of purposes and audiences, producing both formal analytical responses as well as creative pieces.