Design & Technology


We feel it is important for teachers to allow time for personal interaction with pupils. By observing the techniques and strategies that pupils use to tackle problems, teachers may pick up on gifts that do not come to light through more formal assessment procedures. The pupils who are gifted in design and technology may be a very different group from those with gifts and talents in other subjects. The breadth of designing and making means that some of them will have abilities in a specific area -- for example working with food, using computer-assisted design (CAD) or high-quality making -- but not in others.

The faculty recognises that pupils who are gifted in design and technology are likely to:

  • demonstrate high levels of technological understanding and application
  • display high-quality making and precise practical skills
  • have flashes of inspiration and highly original or innovative ideas
  • demonstrate different ways of working or different approaches to issues
  • be sensitive to aesthetic, social and cultural issues when designing and evaluating
  • be capable of rigorous analysis and interpretation of products
  • get frustrated when a teacher demands that they follow a rigid design-and-make process
  • work comfortably in contexts beyond their own experience and empathise with users' and clients' needs and wants.

We identify pupils who are gifted in design and technology by:

  • performance at an unusually advanced national curriculum level for their age group
  • the outcomes of specific tasks
  • evidence of particular aptitudes
  • the way pupils respond to questions
  • the questions that pupils ask themselves.

Key Stage 4

Gifted and talented pupils have the opportunity of gaining two GCSE qualifications in design and technology material areas if fast tracked.

The structure of GCSE course work in design and technology is such that it can be stretched to provide challenge for gifted and talented pupils. For example, in resistant materials pupils can design for an event that is not familiar and therefore will require rigorous research to identify a challenging design specification that requires that products were not only innovative, but also thoroughly tested and of marketable quality.