In Design and Technology at Rooks Heath School, we want all our students to experience a broad and balanced range of Design and Technology subjects, in line with the National Curriculum. Our curriculum encompasses a range of creative and practical activities, linked to key subject knowledge and terminology. It is structured to allow our students to form, build and apply a range of skills covering textiles, polymers, graphics, resistant materials and electronics. The curriculum is designed to be inclusive, and accommodate learners with varied prior experiences and attainment, as our students come from a large range of backgrounds. This is also a key link to our school ethos: ‘Strive to be your best”. Because of the diverse community in our school, we ensure that our lessons are culturally responsive, showcasing exemplar work and practitioners from some of these same backgrounds. This helps to broaden the horizons of our students, by showcasing relevant role-models and highlights the value of differing cultures. It is key to encourage an interest in Design and Technology, due to the rapidly evolving technological world that our students will be entering into when they leave school and enter industry or higher education. 

At the end of Year 9, students opt to choose Design and Technology. We follow the AQA Product Design syllabus, which has a 50/50 coursework and exam weighting. These are both split into: 

• Core technical principles 

• Specialist technical principles 

• Designing and making principles 

Therefore, in Year 10 our curriculum focuses on building subject knowledge, based upon exam content, developing upon and broadening the material taught at Key Stage 3. This enables us to give more focus and lesson time to the Non-Examined Assessment in Year 11. In Year 10 we have 2 main projects that the core and specialist content, and design skills are taught through; one being focused on textiles and the second looking at resistant materials. Through these projects, the curriculum is designed to cover the necessary skills and experience that will enable our students a higher success rate at the end of the course. Feedback is used extensively in Year 10 to give students a secure understanding of success criteria and what is expected during the NEA, where they are required to be resilient and independent learners. In the coursework, students look to create ambitious and imaginative solutions to real world problems and contexts, for users with differing needs and requirements. They are encouraged to study the work of existing practitioners, to aid with the iterative design and modelling process. Students work towards building high quality functional prototypes and evaluating these against their own design proposals.