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The Interactive Digital Magazine from CLEAPSS
From the Junior School to the Paddock: Designing Like an Engineer
Tristram Batt
Why I want your child to fail — and fail often
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The D&T Big Meet
Phil Holton? / Fixperts?
CLEAPSS NEWS
Welcome to the 33rd edition of Futureminds.
As usual, it’s been a busy time at CLEAPSS.
We have been working on lots of new guidance, and designing and making equipment for use in science, and for safety when using some of our D&T equipment.
For more information on this, take a look at the Small Print later in this edition.
We have done a lot of audits, from colleges in London, schools in the home counties and in Guernsey where we did 5 audits.
In January we held a meeting to discuss the Curriculum Review, which was attended by the Awarding Organisations, DfE, academics, DATA and NSEAD, the Food Teachers Centre, British Nutrition Foundation, Oak Academy. This threw up a few areas that we will be hoping are addressed in the new National Curriculum and other materials that we will see later this year, for example:
How can we get Heads to support D&T, or Art and Design when they have other targets to achieve?
Is there a consistency of language for primary – secondary transition?
What will the teacher training model be when the new Orders are published?
D&T may have textiles as a material, but in many schools, it has moved into Art and Design, so where does textiles fit?
Is food an aspect of D&T or a separate subject? If it is separate, what are the implications for delivery?
Some key areas were discussed:
Sustainability
AI use in school
Vocational Education
The use of industry to support the subject
One thing to consider over a tea in the staff room: Oracy – its not ‘what did you learn today?’ it’s ‘why did you learn it?’
Playdate
We also held our first ‘Playdate’ where we had 12 teachers and technicians in the CLEAPSS HQ to have a play with our wide range of equipment and materials. We gave them a chance to use a wide variety of innovative activities, which we hope they can take back to their schools.
If you would like to see the padlet we used to evaluate the playdate take a look:
We hope that this will become an annual event, where we can share our knowledge gained from working with schools, Awarding Organisations, subject groups and suppliers, with small groups of keen individuals, who can then use these practices to engage their young people in their departments.
New facilities
We have also been working with a group of schools who are having new facilities designed and built for D&T or food. We have been able to advise the schools on how best to develop their ideas, and also been able to explain some of the safety constraints that the installers may need to consider. This started with a couple of helplines, which has become quite a detailed piece of work, and something we will be developing more guidance for in the coming months.
Suppliers conference
We also held our CLEAPSS Suppliers Conference, which is a regular event where some of the major school equipment suppliers are invited to CLEAPSS for the day, to see what we are doing to support schools, and how suppliers can help schools.
This conference was the first time we have opened it up to D&T suppliers, and we were pleased that Tilgear was able to attend, hopefully next time we will get some others to come along.
Design Symposium
This term we will be holding our first Design Symposium hosted at the V&A. This brings together our group of teachers and our group of stakeholders for the first time.
We have called the day ‘One Big Thing’ as we are hoping that everyone attending will bring along the thing that they think is important in the world of Design Education. The groups are made up of people representing D&T, food, textiles, Art and Design and other interested parties, including the DfE. We are expecting a wide field of topics to be discussed.
What’s happening this term?
We will continue to be carrying out audits, supporting schools as they develop new facilities and running training, as well as publishing new guidance. We will also be attending some events held by other organisations:
The DTTEG Symposium – a discussion of teacher training in D&T
SciTech conference in Birmingham – a Technician conference with practical sessions from CLEAPSS and DATA
The D&T Big Meet – the largest D&T event of the year at DeMontford University – read more in the article here
Next Article:
CLEAPSS Daily Tips & Ollie the Owl
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