English Curriculum Map

Functional Literacy – Life Beyond School

The functions of literature and language in enabling students to lead the best possible lives are at the forefront of the curriculum. Through English Language, we seek to provide students with the language capacity to navigate and succeed in their daily lives, encouraging students to be able to apply English functionally and accurately in the wider world. In the context of Blackpool’s high levels of deprivation — where many students face barriers to employment, further education, and social mobility — English Language equips them with precise, functional literacy skills to thrive beyond school. We prioritise accurate application of language in real-world scenarios, such as:

• crafting formal letters of application or CVs to secure apprenticeships, part-time work, or college places in a seasonal, tourism-reliant economy;
• confidently navigating job interviews or customer service interactions;
• producing clear, persuasive writing for community advocacy, such as letters to local councillors on issues like housing or coastal environmental concerns;
• interpreting and responding to official documents to avoid disadvantage in everyday adult life.

By embedding these practical, high-stakes uses of English alongside creative and analytical work, we empower students to overcome local challenges, express their voices effectively, and access opportunities that promote long-term independence and contribution to society.”

Careers

Furthermore, we wish to inspire those students who wish to pursue more language-based careers, such as writing, journalism, speech therapy, education, law and media production. Through English Literature we seek to develop students’ ability to think deeply about humanity and to discover the riches of their Literary Heritage, whilst developing the critical faculties to evaluate the ideas and the craft in these texts. We challenge students to think, act and speak like those working in the field would: to read like writers, to write like readers, to speak like orators.

Cultural Capital and Literary Heritage

Our curriculum goes far beyond what is taught in lessons, for whilst we want students to achieve the very best examination results possible, we believe our curriculum goes beyond what is examinable. We do this by regular exposure to a wide range of the finest fiction and non-fiction texts, exploring them through practical, creative and analytical approaches (consolidated through the whole Academy reading programme – The Literary Canon). At every given opportunity, we offer students experiences to enjoy English in the ‘real world’; we take students to the theatre and poetry events and work with writers both in and out of the Academy. Participation in local and national competitions is also supported. We even encourage some healthy competition between our own Hogwarts style ‘Houses’ – our 4 Literary Houses are The Brontes, Dickens, Shakespeare and Shelley! World Book Day is celebrated each year and through this, we aim to capture the imagination of our students and teachers alike.

Inclusion and Equity for All Learners

At St Mary’s, our curriculum is deliberately ambitious and inclusive for every student, including those facing barriers to learning. We hold uncompromising high expectations for all, ensuring no pupil is disadvantaged by low aspirations or a narrowed curriculum. Adaptations are evidence-based, meaningful, and temporary where needed — such as scaffolded tasks, visual supports, pre-teaching vocabulary, audio versions of texts, or targeted interventions — always with the goal of building independence, fluency, and access to the full breadth of English experiences.

In Blackpool’s context of socioeconomic deprivation, we prioritise closing gaps through explicit teaching of vocabulary and comprehension, regular retrieval practice, and personalised support that draws on diagnostic assessment and collaboration with SENDCo, pastoral teams, external agencies, and families. For SEND pupils, our approaches align with EHCP outcomes and promote full participation in lessons, discussions, creative writing, and enrichment (e.g., theatre trips, competitions, Literary Houses). All students benefit from targeted cultural capital building — through diverse texts that reflect and expand their worlds — and opportunities to develop voice and advocacy skills that empower long-term independence. Quality first teaching is at the heart of our curriculum, and through well-researched adaptive teaching methods, we respond to every student’s needs.

This inclusive intent reflects our Catholic commitment to the dignity of every person as a child of God: we remove unnecessary barriers, foster belonging, and enable all to flourish as confident communicators, critical thinkers, and compassionate members of society. By design, our curriculum irrigates the deserts in every student’s life, ensuring equitable access to the enriching power of literature and language.

Key Stage 3

Our Key Stage 3 curriculum is designed to engage our students and fuel their love of English. Whilst we begin working on the skills required for GCSE at the very start of Year 7, GCSE examination success is not our driver; rather, we teach students how to appreciate a range of literary and non-fiction texts, using these reading experiences as ‘springboards’ for students’ own writing and speech. In doing this, we are able to build on students’ skills in each of the threshold concept areas. Each of our topical modules covers both reading and writing; skills are developed cumulatively.

To allow students to build up their skills across the 3 year curriculum, we begin with a focus on the writer’s craft in Year 7, developing students’ ability to analyse language. In Year 8, we introduce students to the concept of evaluating and analysing narrative structure. By Year 9 students are equipped to tackle synthesis and comparison across multiple texts. Interleaved along these analytical reading methods is the development of a student’s ability to write creatively, accurately and for stated audiences and purposes.

Our chosen topics allow us to open up each one of our young person’s mind to the world beyond their own. Seminal world literature, texts across time, modern media and non-fiction texts and writing styles, as well as classic canonical texts, all feature across the 3 year curriculum. Some schools choose a chronological approach, taking students on a linear journey through historical literature. For us, the structure of the course is designed so that the skills progressively increase in challenge, and thus sometimes, text types may seem to regress in difficulty. This is to allow students to become comfortable with applying more challenging skills to less challenging reading material and writing stimuli.

Key Stage 4

When students reach Key Stage 4, they will have a strong foundation to help them tackle the demands of GCSE. We follow the AQA GCSE English Language and English Literature specifications. Schemes of learning for each of these are interleaved, with lesson starters and home learning tasks revisiting previously taught topics for revision. This spaced practice approach, and interleaving between Language and Literature, helps us to support students’ retrieval practice whilst also teaching new content and skills. All students are taught the same Literature texts, regardless of MTG or class teacher.

We also aim to engage our students and spark interest in literary and non-fiction reading throughout the GCSE course. Rather than bombarding students with ‘past-papers’ from the exam board, we have created two engaging modules to help students tackle their English Language GCSE. AQA’s Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing is taught through our module ‘From Page to Screen’, exposing students to a plethora of prose fiction extracts, all of which have been adapted to the screen. This thematic approach has numerous benefits:

• Higher Engagement and Motivation: Students recognise films/series they may have watched (or are eager to watch), which hooks reluctant readers and turns a potentially dry exam skill into something enjoyable and culturally current. This dramatically improves buy-in and reduces the “exam fatigue” that comes from repetitive past-paper drills.
• Authentic Contextual Understanding
  Because each extract is tied to a well-known film/TV adaptation, students can draw on prior knowledge of plot, characters, setting, and tone from the visual medium. This scaffolds comprehension of complex 19th/20th/21st-century prose, making it easier to infer meaning, analyse language/ structure, and evaluate writer’s methods — exactly what Paper 1 demands. For students with lower cultural/reading capital, the film link acts as a bridge rather than a barrier.
• Rich, Varied, and High-Quality Source Material
  The module exposes students to a broad range of genres, time periods, narrative voices, and writing styles. This builds a much wider mental “bank” of descriptive techniques, structural devices, and vocabulary than isolated past-paper practice, enabling students to recognise patterns across texts and transfer skills more flexibly in the unseen exam.
• Natural Development of Creative Writing Skills (Section B)
  Exposure to vivid, cinematic prose inspires stronger descriptive and narrative writing. Students can borrow techniques (e.g., sensory detail in The Salt Path, suspense in It, emotional depth in One Day) and adapt them in their own stories, leading to more imaginative, controlled, and ambitious responses in the creative writing task.

Similarly, AQA’s Paper 2: Writer’s Viewpoints and Perspectives is taught through our module ‘Freedom’, exposing students to a diverse range of non-fiction texts relevant to the real world, all of which tackle engaging topics linked to the theme of ‘Freedom’. From Marcus Rashford’s Open Letter to Parliament (regarding free school meals), Emma Watson’s speech on gender equality, to biographical accounts from the likes of Yeonmi Park (North Korean defector, human rights activist, and author), students’ non-fiction reading experiences are rich and varied, prompting passion and enthusiasm in their own discursive and transactional writings.

By the end of Year 11, we hope to see as many of our students continue their English studies at A-level, and we offer both the Language and Literature A-Level courses. For those pursuing alternative pathways, we believe that the English curriculum experienced at St Mary’s will have enriched their lives whilst also allowing them to succeed as communicators in their future endeavours.

Catholic Ethos

As a Catholic academy, our ethos runs through everything we teach; English is the perfect subject to encourage our students to be caring members of our community. Through English lessons, we challenge prejudice, equip students with the skills needed to express their thoughts and beliefs; we use literature as a window to explore humanity across the world. It is not possible to teach English at St Mary’s without incorporating the essence of our Catholic ethos.