‘This is our seventh consecutive year working with First Story.  It is wonderful to see our Year 10 students who attend the First Story club get so much out of the experience. The launch of the students’ anthology is always widely celebrated and has a high profile in our school. Parents, carers, Governors and staff purchase copies of the  anthology and it is subsequently available in our school library.  The whole experience not only develops their creative writing skills under the guidance of  a  published author, but the impact upon their confidence and public speaking is a joy to see.

Working with First Story has also impacted upon the school in other ways.  It has provided opportunities for students  to enter national creative writing competitions and we have had great success with these. Whilst the curriculum comes with many constraints, the English department use strategies derived from the First Story work to support the GCSE creative writing tasks and descriptive/narrative writing for younger students further down the school in Key Stage 3 .

First Story has been a real success for us at Willowfield and we look forward to this partnership continuing to flourish.’