GCSE Art & Design

Art in secondary school teaches students to observe the world around them and see it in a new way; they record, analyse and create a visual response to their surroundings.

Why study Art and Design?

Studying Art and Design enhances fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination whilst actively promoting problem-solving, lateral thinking, complex analysis and critical thinking skills, all of which are highly prized by employers and will help students excel in a wide range of professions.

The GCSE Art & Design course enables you to develop a visual language and promotes visual literacy. Art & Design is an ideal platform for many career options particularly within the creative industries, a sector that is flourishing in the UK. Studying Art & Design GCSE could be the start of your journey towards fine art practice, architecture, contemporary crafts, photography, fashion, film-making, Illustration, gallery & museum work, interior design, special effects, animation, game design and many other digital careers.

Course Content

BSG offers a broad-based fine art course, building on and developing the skills acquired at KS3. Young artists studying GCSE ideally should be curious about how and why art is made as well as enjoy and be enthusiastic about making art themselves.

You will be encouraged, especially in Year 10, to take creative risks and explore the possibilities of new techniques and materials in both two and three dimensions; you will have the opportunity to work within several artistic disciplines, including drawing, painting, print-making, photography, mixed media and sculpture (e.g. clay, mod-roc, wire, and card). Smaller groups at GCSE mean that there is greater opportunity for one to one support within lessons.

Students are encouraged to be ambitious with their ideas and with the practical work that they produce.

We organise visits, typically to a museum or gallery and one to Kew Gardens; both provide an inspirational starting point for coursework units. Students will have a choice of topics.

You will learn how to:

Develop your practical skills, including drawing from direct observation
Critically analyse art works, and explore the ideas behind them
Experiment with a wide range of materials and techniques
Develop your own imaginative ideas
Plan and produce substantial paintings, sculptures and mixed media pieces

How will it be assessed?

We follow the OCR course for GCSE – the course is divided into two components:

Art & Design Portfolio (60%):

This is the coursework component (summer term Year 10 to January of Year 11); you will submit 1 unit (project) selected from the work you have produced over the course. There will be continuous individual assessment of coursework (as already experienced at Key Stage 3) and this work can be improved to gain higher marks.

Art & Design Externally Set Task (40%):

You will choose a topic from a selection set by the exam board (OCR) in January of Year 11, and develop a unit (project) over a set period; this unit is completed by the beginning of May during a ten-hour exam under supervised conditions.

(Both the Portfolio and Externally Set Task are non-examined assessments which are marked by your teacher, then exhibited for moderation by the exam board.) Further information:

Further information:

For further information on the benefits of taking Art GCSE, visit:

http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/289223-five-reasons-to-study-the-arts-factsheet.pdf

Also, BBC Bitesize website has a collection of great resources, advice, videos and links to artists and those working in the creative industries: https://www.bbc.co.uk/education/subjects/z6hs34j