Comments on: Design and Technology Association’s vision paper calls for curriculum overhaul

By: michela bruno

michela bruno — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 08:15:10 +0000

My daughter has just finished Y9 and she has chosen D&T for her GCSE. She loves design, in particular graphic design, set design and costume design, reasons why she chose D&T but she was extremelly disappointed to learn that the government, years ago, has changed the curriculum and all the interesting projects of old students we saw when touring schools, she will neve make because now D&T’s curriculum is only about product design and architecture. The reason why kids don’t choose D&T now it’s because it’s boring. Number dropped after the curriculum has been changed. Spending 5 years just experiencing product design and architecture and learning different types of materials limits the creativity and the possibility to experience the immensly wide variety of design disciplines available as a carreer. The kids are just bored to death. Even a friend of my daughter, who wants to become an architect so is more interested than most in the new curriculum, has decided to take Art and drop D&T because it was so boring. My daughter attends a very good school so the problem is not her school or her teacher, it’s the curriculum. Make D&T varied, challenging and up to date to the requests of the UK creative industry and you’ll get the numbers back.

By: Carl St. James

Carl St. James — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 08:47:43 +0000

I taught Design and Technology for nearly 15 years and watched it and other creative subject areas move from prestige core areas of the curriculum to also-rans.

Subsequent government policies of league tables and the E-Bacc have meant talented young people are not given true options at GCSE but rather are funnelled into academic subject areas based on the school’s agenda. The subsequent needs and wants of the individual are ignored as schools seek to ‘game’ the system and keep Ofsted from the door.

The previous generation of teachers used to use the offensive moniker ‘craft for the daft’ as low ability students were pushed into creative subject areas based on the notion that they are all kinaesthetic learners and to keep them from lowering the progress averages in other subject areas.

Those students were made to feel nothing less than welcome and supported by myself and my colleagues but the inevitable low pass rates, pulling away of enthusiastic KS3 students and behavioural issues in areas with tight H&S inevitably takes its toll on morale.

The purpose of education is to prepare young people for a world we cannot even envision yet. Creativity and problem solving are core skills in this so that they choose to think instead of remember. D&T/DEI should be at the very core of this area and the new white paper makes this quite clear.

The teaching of manufacturing skills should be embedded in this throughout rather than become a means to an end. There is still too much ‘woodwork’ DNA that runs through workshops up and down the country.

I used to teach a project where the students cast Roman cloak clasps out of Pewter. They would spend time researching roman fashions to influence their design work but they would also put on a mini fashion show at the end of the project and be graded on this as much as their physical outcome. It’s this sort of expanded thinking that the subject area needs.

By: Kirsti

Kirsti — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 11:09:22 +0000

Here here! Surely, quite apart from future career progression, early stages D&T education can also develop practical skills & learning that are (and are becoming even more so) relevant to everyone.

Just as Food Tech taught us the fundamental life skill of cooking & thinking about our food, can D&T help to instill confidence in mending, repairing & taking an interest in the products that are all around us?

All very useful as we try to move towards a less wasteful, more circular way of living!