Art & Design at King Edward VI Northfield School for Girls is a valued subject.  It engages, inspires and challenges our learners, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to participate in, experiment with, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design.

All pupils study Art & Design at KS3. We believe that our curriculum offers variety, breadth and challenge and is fully compliant with the expectations of the national Curriculum.  At KS3 we learn through practical projects themed to explore the world of Art, Craft & Design within a wide variety of different contexts and genres.

Each project is designed to develop both skills and knowledge with a focus on:

• Generating ideas: skills of designing and developing ideas
  Pupils learn to research, observe, imagine, explore, experiment, select, organise, plan, design, problem-solve, think and act creatively.

• Making: skills of making Art, Craft & Design
  Pupils learn to control, explore & use qualities of materials, media, techniques and processes, think and act creatively.

• Evaluating: skills of judgement and evaluation
  Pupils learn to understand, interpret, analyse, explain, make connections, respond, make meaning, allowing them to go onto strengthen the visual impact of their work.

• Knowledge: knowledge of art processes and context
  Pupils learn about medium and media, meaning, purpose, art, artists, periods, genres, styles, movements, craft, design, architecture.

At KS4 we offer AQA; GCSE Art & Design, and where appropriate, Entry Level Art & Design with OCR in order to enable as many pupils as possible to have access.

The GCSE course is comprised of 60% controlled assessment in which the theme or project brief is set by the department, and 40% set task (exam project) with briefs set by the exam board.

Learning for both the controlled assessment and the set task is designed to meet the four assessment objectives:

AO1 – Develop: Developing a range of ideas from a given starting point that show understanding of your source material and that are informed by the work of artists & designers. 
AO2 – Experiment: Refining your ideas by exploring and making appropriate and thoughtful choices from a range of media, techniques and processes. 
AO3 – Record: Recording observations and insights relevant to your intentions, for example by, drawing, taking photographs, making notes. 
AO4 – Present: Presenting personal, informed and meaningful work that shows critical and analytical understanding. Realising your intentions (in a final piece).

The Entry Level Certificate (ELC) follows a similar course and assessment structure, making it very easy for students to study alongside each other, and also for decisions to be made quite late into the course about whether an individual is more suited to the ELC or to GCSE. 

GCSE Art and Design
All students begin their studies with projects aimed at introducing GCSE working practices, learning about assessment objectives and developing confidence and independence with a range of media and processes. These focus on drawing and photography skills, and exploring different ways they might respond to the work of an artist/designer in order to develop their own ideas. Students then start their extended project (‘Human’), which forms the majority of the work they submit for their Portfolio (Unit 1 – 60% of final grade). 

From January of year 11, all students start work on their Externally Set Task (exam project), which culminates in a 10-hour supervised period of work. This is usually referred to as their art exam. 

2-Year KS4