English

The English Department is one of the largest departments in the school, comprising of seven full time members plus support teachers in the SEN department. All groups are mixed ability. Classes in Years 7 and 8 are divided into two cohorts, whilst Year 9 and GCSE have three groups. Class sizes start at around 18, rising to 22. The Junior School girls have written reviews of their visit to Hamlet and you can read the reviews here.

GCSE

At St. Mary's all girls take both GCSE English and English Literature at Higher Level.
For both English and English Literature we follow the AQA specification B .
For the Literature specification see English Literature.

AS & A2 Level

This is an extremely popular A Level option, usually all students continue through to A2 and excellent results.

We follow the OCR English Literature 3828 & 7828 specifications.

Often, the most enjoyable part of this course is the coursework which allows for individual exploration and originality.

Further Activities

Whilst at St. Mary's girls have the opportunity to take part in regular competitions, debates and societies. For example:

For Years 7, 8 and 9 the English Department runs Speaking Competitions; the Year 7 girls enjoy Public Speaking on a range of interesting and challenging topics; the Year 8 pupils recite Poetry in groups or as individuals, often dressing up, and delighting their audience with humour and sentiment; finally the Year 9 girls enter a Prose Reading Competition reading from a wide range of Victorian Literature for children and adults. The Class and Year heats are great fun and give every girl a chance to speak her best, building up confidence and creating articulate young women.
There are many opportunities for Writing as well as Speaking. The highly successful Phoenix Poets Group meets regularly, giving girls a chance to read and share their own poetry. The Group has now published two volumes of poetry so the members also get to see their work in print which is especially exciting and rewarding.
A group of young Writers gets together for those who enjoy writing short stories and novels. The pupils read and discuss each other's work and enjoy shared writing tasks for experience, learning and for fun. Some students have completed novels that they are now keen to publish.
Girls are able to attend a Diagnostic Handwriting Group which meets regularly. Through this their particular problem areas are analysed and they work on individual schemes in order to improve and develop.
Reading: a group of girls in Year 11 meet together to discuss a novel they have chosen to read. Their list of books includes A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham and Exodus by Julie Bertagna.
There is a Pupil Mentoring system which operates within the class room and across the years to enable girls to share their skills and strengths and to learn from each other.

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