The Charter School

Students will be involved in the following activities:

Designing and making

·    Understanding that designing and making impacts on the world.

· Applying knowledge of materials and production processes to design products.

· Understanding that products and systems have an impact on quality of life.

· Exploring how other products have been designed and made.

Cultural understanding

· Understanding how products evolve according to users’ and designers’ needs, beliefs, ethics and values and how they are influenced by local traditions and available materials. Exploring how products contribute to lifestyle and consumer choices.

Creativity

· Making links between principles of good design, existing solutions and technological knowledge to develop innovative products and processes.

· Reinterpreting and applying learning in new design contexts and communicating ideas in new or unexpected ways.

· Exploring and experimenting with ideas, materials, technologies and techniques.

Critical evaluation

· Analysing existing products and solutions to inform designing and making.

· Evaluating the needs of users and the context in which products are used to inform designing and making.

· Exploring the impact of ideas, design decisions and technological advances and how these provide opportunities for new design solutions.

· All students follow the National curriculum in Design Technology and do two, one-hour lessons every week

· Students follow a carousel system in order to experience the different areas of Design technology from specialist staff in specially equipped rooms

· The areas we currently offer in KS3 are food, textiles, resistant materials and electronics

· At KS4 we offer a range of GCSEs. At present students are studying Food and systems and Control as well as product design. Product design students can choose between textiles and resistant materials specialisms. All GCSEs are AQA.

· We are currently piloting the New Specialist Diploma in engineering at level one

· At KS5 we have a very popular product design A Level course

We have excellent results at GCSE and A Level

· We have specialist rooms for Food, Textiles, electronics as well as two workshops and an ICT suite

· We have recently received state of the art CADCAM facilities including 3D printer, laser cutter and milling machine through our involvement with the Lambeth/Southwark engineering Diploma Consortium.

We have a very experienced team of veterans who all offer specialist areas of expertise including electronics, food, textiles and fashion, metal work, woodwork, plastics, Computer aided design, jewellery and all aspects of product design.

We have an excellent technician

· We run a variety of after school activities most importantly support for exam courses and coursework.

· Other classes for lower school students are food, textiles and engineering as well as a new class in run by construction industry professionals

· We have been instrumental in developing the new engineering diploma in Southwark and have links with the Royal Academy of Engineering and the London Engineering Project