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Overview

This course is designed to encourage students to develop an awareness of the nature and significant importance of Design and Technology in a rapidly changing society. Throughout the course, students look for needs, wants and opportunities and respond to them by developing a range of ideas in order to make suitable products and systems.

The course aims to provide students the opportunity to become autonomous and problem solvers as individuals and members of a team. The course allows students to progress either directly to employment, or to study for an Advanced level qualification in Design and Technology, Home Economics and GNVQ Manufacturing and Engineering

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 and 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 entrepeneurial skills.
• encourage the development of students' undertanding 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.