A NEW project designed to consolidate and develop students' writing skills is proving to be a huge success.

Since starting their secondary education at Flint High School all year seven students have been taking part in the Mastery project.

The project, which is approved and funded by GwE, the School Effectiveness and Improvement Service for North Wales, was introduced by the English department to enhance the young students’ writing ability in preparation for their studies at high school and beyond.

Ellen Thomas, student, said: "The mastery English lessons have been fun as I like creative writing and using my imagination."

With a grant from GwE, the school has been able to fund Allison Reilly from Cheshire-based The Literacy Company. The company works with schools to deliver a wide range of literacy initiatives including the Mastery project, which is already an established practice in English schools.

Louise Ellams, Key Stage 3 Co-ordinator for English, helped develop the project at the school. She added: "We are delighted with the progress the students have made. The project has proved to be a great success.

"The focus for the year has been on writing skills and the idea of ‘mastery’ is that students recap the skills in everything they do until it has been mastered.

"Allison initially came into school to introduce the project to staff and she has also trained a number of our sixth form students so that they can support some of the year seven students, which has worked really well.

"The students have responded very positively to the texts and already we can see that their accuracy in writing has significantly improved. Students are now consciously crafting their writing, and this is a very important skill."