Design and technology embraces all those activities of mankind which result in improving our quality of life through the development of physical resources.

Education in design and technology is about helping pupils to discover and develop their own particular interests and aptitudes for designing, inventing, planning, constructing.

The national curriculum:

• allows schools to meet the individual learning needs of pupils and to develop a distinctive character and ethos rooted in their local communities.

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Design and technology is the activity that produced The Pyramids, Stonehenge, irrigation schemes, agriculture, musical instruments, roads, bridges, airports, computers, television, mobile phones and much, much more!

It produces the technologies used by artists and composers and the media for writers to communicate with readers.

Education in design and technology:

• is about acquiring a discipline of physical and intellectual skills and the knowledge and understanding to support and give purpose to those skills.

The national curriculum:

• requires subjects to be robust enough to define and defend the core of knowledge and cultural experience which is the entitlement of every pupil.

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Education in design and technology:

• enables teachers to capitalise ontheir own personal interests and expertise, the special concerns of their community and the diverse interests and creative enthusiasms of their students.

The national curriculum:

• requires subjects to be flexible enough to give teachers the scope to build their teaching around it in ways which will enhance its delivery to their pupils.

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Education in design and technology:

• is not about forcing pupils into a predetermined mould, it is about igniting a flame of enthusiasm for being creative, making things and understanding how things work and are made.

The National Curriculum:

• aims to foster pupils’ creativity
• gives teachers discretion to find the best ways to inspire in their pupils a joy and commitment to learning that will last a lifetime.

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Design and technology belongs to everyone. It is used in everyday life, not just by professional inventors and designers.

Teachers and schools have both the opportunity and the responsibility to design their own syllabuses, schemes of work and assessments, which build on their own experiences and enthusiasms and which are best matched to their own local community. All this in the interests of their own pupils.

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Learning in design and technology is not simply a matter of following a series of projects involving the activities of designing and making. Neither can it be dictated as a single expertise such as woodworking, silversmithing, robotics, cooking, pottery, model making, architecture or civil engineering.

But what is common about it is its creativity, its level of skills and its dependence on knowledge and understanding (i.e. the technologies).

By the very creative nature of design and technology the actual content of its discipline cannot be predetermined; that would constrain thinking rather than open minds to new opportunities and possibilities.

But neither can learning in design and technology be left to chance or serendipity.

The discipline of design and technology provides a firm structure for planning syllabuses and schemes of work that will progress with age and ability and provide the foundation for lifelong learning.

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The purpose of this web site is to help students and teachers to take advantage of the flexibility at their disposal and to create worthwhile courses leading to creative capability which will inspire in their pupils a joy and commitment to learning that will last a lifetime.