That sounds like a really interesting program! Seeing the end of the first six-year cycle must have been quite an experience.

I TA English courses at the post-secondary level at a large university, which means that I mark papers, lead tutorials, hold office hours with students to explain assignments and so on. Essentially, the students I deal with are the ones that have come from high school English and have decided, for whatever reason (interest, breadth requirements, not sure what else to take) to take an undergraduate English class. I've posted in the past about what I think English classes try to teach students. That might be of interest for you if you are preparing students for taking university-level English courses, but I doubt that you can assume everyone leaving your class will go on to be an English major. Your curriculum is undoubtedly significantly broader than mine. With that in mind, here is what I think English courses (at various levels) attempt to teach:

1) Analysis/critical thinking:

Yes, people who teach English throw around 'critical thinking' a lot. But we really do try to teach our students to critically evaluate statements. What is the argument of this article? Is it logical? Is it persuasive? Why/why not? These sorts of questions are not entirely dissimilar from the ones asked by English journal articles (What is the author doing here? Why are they doing it?). I stand by the argument that teaching students to assess the merits and flaws of statements made by others will serve them well regardless of their ultimate career path.

2) Synthesis:

This is perhaps something that only really comes in at the end of high school or the beginning of university, and its something that students I see frequently struggle with. Reading others' arguments about a text and trying to come up with their own argument which is in conversation to the ones they've read can be very challenging for students. This is where having been taught good analysis skills comes in handy, since one of the most straightforward ways of building your argument is to critically analyze the arguments of others (what does this person say about the text? Do I agree/disagree with them about these aspects of the text? etc.) Synthesis skills are obviously important for academia, where scholars are expected to engage with others' arguments about texts all the time, but I would argue that these sorts of skills are also useful in any discipline where you have to make (and evaluate) decisions based on various proposals.

3: Communication/Argument:

Others have already commented on this, so I'll just leave my two cents. I've often found that I'm never entirely confident about my thoughts about a text until I've written something about it. Getting your thoughts down on paper in a manner that others can understand is, to me, a vital part of developing your own understanding of your ideas. I'm not a big fan of the 'five-paragraph essay' (and in fact spend a good amount of time 'un-teaching' it to students who have been taught that it is the only way to write a good essay in English), but being able to set down an argument in a logical and coherent fashion is as valuable as it can be difficult, and I think that's the case regardless of what career you're in (I've seen lots of meandering business e-mails and reports).

As you can probably surmise, these points build on one another. If you're lacking strong analysis skills, you're unlikely to be able to do much in terms of synthesis of communication. Some of the students I deal with have a hard time keeping their essays on track. But far more often they stumble at having to create a thesis statement, and end up offering plot summary rather than argument, which also prevents them from doing any sort of synthesis or communicating any coherent ideas about the text. I agree with Elisza that decoupling reading from writing is not a good way to go, because I think that strong writing depends on strong reading.

Obviously, you know your students and their needs and weaknesses better than anyone here. If you haven't thought about it in this way already, it might be worth considering what you felt were the most challenging aspects of the 'first cycle', whether or not you felt you were able to address those challenges, and if/how you would do so differently next time.