Key Stage 4 Curriculum Intention

At KS4 we deliver the OCR Cambridge Nationals Engineering qualifications in Design, Manufacture and Systems.

Currently we are in a cross over year as the year 11’s are the last cohort on the old specification and year 10’s are on the new specification (RSh has been on the development team for these qualifications).

We have chosen to deliver this suite of qualifications as they allow students to study and access Engineering at Level 2. The qualifications also encourage students to understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of Engineering, to develop learning and practical skills that can be applied to real-life contexts and work situations, to think creatively, innovatively, analytically, logically and critically, whilst developing independence and confidence in using skills, processes, tools, techniques and machines that are used in the engineered world.

The qualifications have also been selected as they provide a firm basis of knowledge and understanding to progress onto our level 3 provision, apprenticeships and university engineering qualifications. The combination of these qualifications and their direct links to our KS5 curriculum enables us to spiralise our substantive and disciplinary knowledge, skills, techniques and processes from KS4 to KS5 effectively.

The curriculum allows students to continue to build up schema, develop a broad understanding of key engineering techniques, concepts, processes and skills, identify and address misconceptions

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KS4 Curriculum Knowledge Covered

We deliver our engineering curriculum in a sequence which allows the students to gain understanding of fundamental techniques, processes and knowledge which is then built upon in other units such as; ‘Developing understanding of technical drawings and health and safety before moving onto hand fabrication’ or ‘Understanding manual machining techniques before moving onto CAD and CAM’ We deliver all engineering qualifications in a parallel sequence which allows us to interleave units and topics across the department but also with other subject areas such as materials and their properties with Science

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Mutually beneficial curriculum connections

Lots of overlap between Maths and Science, for example the teaching of units of measure in Y10 HT1 is then used practically in Engineering, materials and their properties is in Engineering and Chemistry (periodic table). Electricity and electronics is in engineering and Science. Geometry skills delivered in maths is used in Manufacture, Design and Product Design (A level) We also aid the WVMI curriculum through globalisation, quality standards and the rule of law.