Design Technology

Design and Technology is a subject where learners investigate a need or respond to an opportunity to make or modify something. Our Pupils develop their intellectual and creative skills to make products that are useful, both to themselves and other people. It is an opportunity for learners to be inventive and to develop an understanding of the appropriateness of technological actions using ‘state of the art’ equipment such as 3d printers and Laser cutters alongside more traditional manufacturing methods.

Students in years 7-9 embark upon a wide variety design projects, covering the main focus areas – Food, Resistant Materials, Systems and Control, Sustainability and Textiles.

These projects aim to improve each pupil’s knowledge of the ‘Design Process’ and practical workshop skills.The projects involve increasingly demanding tasks that improve skills, knowledge and understanding in working with a range of tools and materials. Learners respond to a brief set for the class and develop their own designs further.

We are constantly seeking to enable our learners to:

• Acquire designing and making skills in a range of material areas to enable them to be confident to design, make and modify products and systems for identified purposes, selecting and using resources effectively.
• Develop the ability to combine their designing and making skills with knowledge and understanding in order to design and make quality products.
• Consider the social, moral and environmental effects and implications of technological activity.
• Develop critical and aesthetic abilities to evaluate design and technology activity including their own in the context of an identified need.
• To be able to work individually and as team members.

Students are also encouraged to develop independence, accuracy and problem solving throughout their project work and to improve their literacy, numeracy and thinking skills.