The Departamento de Lengua y Cultura Españolas is subject to Spanish educational law and inspection. Our curriculum guide must comply with the LOE (Ley Orgánica de Educación) but we adapt our teaching methods to those of the British system. Reading and encouraging our students to be “heavy” readers is one of our foremost aims in both the Junior and Senior Schools.

We dedicate a weekly session to reading and working intensively with texts in class. Students have a list of books to read and work with at home. Our Junior School library has been renovated last year. Students were delighted to take home their favourite stories.

The Junior School students have enjoyed the plays performed in Teatro Municipal de Alcobendas and San Sebastián de los Reyes (Perejil y la diva infantil, Tris-Tras-Trus, Enrique V, No eres una lagartija). Ms Muñoz faultlessly organised our trips to the theatre in the Senior School.

We had our annual trip to the Congreso de los Diputados where Year 9 enjoyed the guided tour through the palace and “el salón de plenos”. Year 8 worked very hard in their group archaeological workshop after their visit to Arqueopinto (directed by the Atapuerca Visitors Centre). They showed great enthusiasm, effort and imagination. A new interactive whiteboard has been placed in the Sociales room. Our students are delighted and teachers as well: they live in a digital world outside school and in an analogical one inside the school. Both worlds have to meet.

Since 2007 Runnymede College students do not have to sit the Selectividad in order to enter the different Spanish universities if that is their wish. All the information can be read in our web page or consulted with the Headmaster or myself. Therefore, Lengua y Literatura and Sociales are not compulsory in the VI Form. But we do think at Runnymede that students who might think of enjoying a Spanish university should have enough preparation to enable them to have an excellent start to their first year: texts comprehension, wide vocabulary, historical knowledge, Spanish literature, “cultura general”... Our VI Form students will have the opportunity of preparing at school their entrance to Spanish universities, including private ones (Comillas - ICADE, ICAI-).