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Specification

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Overview

This course is designed to encourage students to become autonomous and creative problem solvers, as individuals and members of a team. Students must look for needs, wants and opportunities and respond to them by developing a range of ideas and making products and systems. This course combines practical skills with an understanding of aesthetics, social and environmental issues, function and industrial practices.

This qualification will assess achievement at levels 1, 2 and 3 of the National Curriculum.

Students may progress either directly to employment or to Foundation Level courses within the National Framework for Qualifications.

Specification aims

The aims of this specification are to:

• Encourage students to combine their designing and making skills with knowledge and understanding, in order to design and make quality products
• Promote design and technology capability in students through activities which involve a range of contexts, materials, processes and to lead to practical outcomes
• Give opportunities to develop practical abilities and the confidence to design, make and modify products for identified purposes, selecting and using resources effectively
• Promote the use of graphic techniques and ICT including computer-aided design (CAD), to generate, develop, model and communicate design proposals
• Promote the use of computer-aided manufacture (CAM) in single item production and in batch or volume production
• Encourage the development of students' critical and aesthetic abilities, enabling them to evaluate design and technology activity, including their own, in the context of an identified need
• Encourage the development of students' understanding of the needs and values of a range of users; including spiritual, moral, social, and cultural considerations
• Promote the keys skills of communication, application of number, IT, working with others, improving learning and performance and problem solving
• Encourage the development of students' thinking skills, financial capability, enterprise and entrepreneurial skills
• Encourage the development of students' understanding of work-related learning and the principles of sustainable design and production systems
• Encourage students to consider how present and past design and technology, relevant to a designing and making process, affects society
• Encourage students to consider the uses and affects of new technologies and modern materials on product design and manufacture
• Provide for activities which give students opportunities to work both individually and as a member of a team