English

"The power of imagination makes us infinite." [John Muir]

The English Department at Manchester Academy is made up of a dynamic team of teachers who lead learning in the classroom and outside with many extra-curricular projects coming from within the faculty. 

The English suite is located on the second floor and has seven teaching classrooms that are equipped with the most up-to-date interactive whiteboard technology which is in tune with our modern world. In addition to English the faculty delivers lessons in Drama, Media Studies and Film Studies and has a dedicated Media suite on the ground floor to support these subjects.

Key Stage 3

The curriculum for Key Stage Three (KS3) is designed to meet the needs of our students and to cover the full range of reading, writing and speaking/listening skills that they will need in order to succeed in both their educational and professional lives.

Our specially designed curriculum offers literacy and reading support for those students who have fallen behind in previous language lessons or who have a low reading age as a result of recently arriving in the country and recently beginning to learn the language; our aim is to ensure that all students can read competently in English when they leave us no matter what the starting point. We also offer a range of advanced skills to our learners that will lead them into the development of their analytical skills in preparation for KS4 and further study.

Examples of this include our involvement in the BBC News Report with Y8 students as well as the explicit teaching of high level reading skills that are useful in many subjects, not just English. All classes in KS3 read regularly as a class and are encouraged to read outside school independently as well and we offer a range of things to support this such as Book Club and additional reading activities in library lessons for some students. Finally we encourage all our learners to takepart in some of our many extra-curricular activities to further stretch their skills andchallenge their minds.

Key Stage 4 

KS4 results in the English department were the best ever, with well over 50% of our students gaining a grade C, more than doubling the previous year’s results. This result puts us near the top of schools nationally for “adding value” – improving students results over the 5 years from Y7-Y11 and demonstrates the value of all the work the teachers and students have put in. Students at KS4 have access to the same extra-curricular support as KS3 students and lessons are planned to ensure that every student reaches their potential - with a bit of hard work.

In Media Studies results are over 90% again this year, and in Drama the results were also the best ever – showing that we are delivering courses that our students enjoy and are willing to work hard in. We fully expect this high achievement to continue in future years. 

Sixth Form 

In the Sixth Form we teach a range of courses, from Literacy Entry Level to GCSEs in English and Media Studies and numbers for all courses have risen this year. We are planning on seeing some great successes with these students too when they begin to complete their courses at the end of this year.