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The English Department at Sawtry Community College has completely revised its schemes of work to place subject knowledge and appreciation of our literary heritage at the heart of the English curriculum: for example, students in Year 7 follow the history of literature from the Middle English Courtly Romance to the present day. This is supported by special events, perhaps most notably our Chaucer Day of last year, where the English and History Departments got together with ‘Chaucer rapper’ Baba Brinkman to explore The Canterbury Tales in its social, historical and literary context.
The Department has close links to Ferrar House in Little Gidding, only a short distance from the school and famous as the inspiration for the conclusion 
of TS Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’. One of the school’s four houses is named after TS Eliot, and students from Sawtry Community College won both the secondary school prizes in a competition run jointly by The TS Eliot Trust and The National Poetry Society: the students were presented with their prizes by Valerie Eliot and their poems were published on The Poetry Society’s website.
The Department ensures that an appropriate range of books to support reading both by the students and in the community is available in the College library, which is shared by the village at large. There is also significant opportunity for participation in the study of Literature outside school via electronic means - the Department contributes a wealth of materials to the Learning Resources area of the College’s website and the Department runs a web-log for literary discussion at www.lightingfools.blogspot.com. Three members of the Department have also participated in PTI CPD events and links with Cambridge academics are developing usefully: for example, one A level group based their coursework on a lecture by Professor Helen Cooper.
Sawtry Community College is a vibrant and dynamic mixed secondary school for ages 11-19, situated in the village of Sawtry, roughly equidistant between Peterborough and Huntingdon. It is a government-designated Maths & Computing Specialist College with High Performing School Status.
