Aims and Philosophy
The English Department believes in encouraging the development of a comfortable balance between orthography (correct spelling, punctuation and grammar) and creativity. We want all the children to be challenged according to their abilities and to enjoy the experience.
Curriculum by Year Group
In the first couple of years of the prep school children are encouraged to broaden their reading and develop the way they express themselves, both orally and on paper.
By the end of year Six, children should be more aware of themselves and others, including adults. They should be more confident in their ability to express opinions that will be listened to and valued, and they should be responding readily to the basic methods used by writers to transfer their ideas. Compositions should be lively and inventive, and should contain evidence of increasingly complex syntax.
The CE and Scholarship courses clearly require refining of exam technique but experience tells me that jaded, over-prepared children do not necessarily perform well on the day. Lively sessions involving humour, empathy, reading competitions, poetry learning and performance, debating, puzzles, etc. encourage less formulaic responses. We do not want to put children off English for life with a dry diet of comprehension and essay-writing (although these areas do, of course, take their proper place). The CE syllabus leads to examination of children’s abilities to understand and respond clearly to unseen non-fiction and poetry (Paper One) as well as a set book on a given subject (currently “Conflict”) (Paper Two – Section A). There is also a requirement to complete a composition in about forty minutes (Paper Two – Section B).
Scholarship exams are by no means standardised. The children must be ready for anything from Chaucer to Larkin, from Dickens to Jeanette Winterson. Some schools present challenges more akin to geography essays whilst others vie with each other to include ever more arcane material. The basic requirements remain the same, however: candidates must be capable of showing off their flair, their maturity, their ability to think for themselves, their organisational skills and their willingness to engage whatever the difficulties.