French

Hampton Court House is a profoundly Francophile school which believes in fostering French not as an academic subject but as a living language through which we teach other subjects. Thus in the junior section of the school all teaching is predominantly in French by native French speakers. Teachers readily help children who need a little translation into English here and there but, all in all, the method is astonishingly successful at creating confident, fluent young French speakers.

After the junior section, when teaching in the wider school switches to English, we cater both to children who have developed strong French skills with us and to children who join us with little or no French. Thus the subject is streamed into two sets, with further differentiation available both for our weakest students (who can receive extra tuition), and our strongest students, whom we often prepare for C.N.E.D. examinations (Centre National d’Enseignement à Distance), a more appropriate challenge than GCSE.

Given Hampton Court House’s strengths in French, we are currently reviewing the curriculum with a view to entering pupils with good French much earlier for GCSE and exploring appropriate ways of challenging and extending their language skills thereafter.