The core focus in the Junior School is on the essential English skills; speaking, listening, reading and writing in order to deliver high standards in all other subjects.
All children have weekly Mandarin lessons. In Years 3 and 4, we study Mandarin for 90 minutes a week building to two hours in Years 5 and 6.
We also provide a daily morning session, for native and near-native speakers who meet the criteria of attending the group. The purpose of the programme is to provide children with more exposure and targeted learning opportunities in Chinese to enable them to achieve the best of their ability in the language. In these sessions, teachers speak mainly in Chinese and the materials are tailored to the children’s learning progress.
We encourage all students who speak a language other than English at home to continue to develop their skills in their 'mother-tongue'. We support this through a mother-tongue programme for the Junior School; this involves facilitating tuition for native speakers of Mandarin, French, Spanish, Urdu, Mandarin, Hindi and Japanese.