The English department at Radnor House Sevenoaks is committed to providing an exciting, varied and challenging experience of English for all pupils. Our expertise and high expectations enable us to work together to help our pupils achieve their full potential.

We provide a welcoming environment, with passionate teachers, who convey their subject knowledge in an engaging, exciting and challenging manner. Through immersive whole school events, such as alien crash landings, and regular competitions with the chance to see their work published, children are inspired to develop a passion and enthusiasm for writing.

Children are supported in assessing their own strengths, as well as identifying areas that they can improve on, with strategies developed in conjunction with their teachers. As a result, our children develop into self-regulated learners who are motivated to engage in, and improve, their learning. In their written work: they explore and develop vocabulary and their understanding of grammatical structures while formulating their ideas in a wide range of genres.  

Reading underpins the curriculum, and we begin the journey in Nursery. The pupils continue to progress through the Prep School and, if needs be, help is offered along the journey with individually tailored reading recovery schemes. Similarly, if a pupil is assessed as being particularly able, they will be given challenges to extend their high ability as well as the opportunity to take part in author workshops that we host throughout the year. We are often fortunate enough to have pupils whose first language is not English. This brings an exciting new dimension to our cultural life at school and they are given every opportunity to develop their language skills. 

All pupils are encouraged to be confident in expressing themselves in spoken English with an emphasis placed on oracy which continues into the senior school. They learn to listen to, respond and discuss ideas in different situations from retelling stories and legends, to expressing persuasive arguments and debating. 

At Radnor House, we give every opportunity to our pupils to become great readers, writers thinkers and communicators.