Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency

Design and technology is a mind-stretching subject that provides pupils with an understanding of the value of products and the practical skills they need to apply their understanding to create products of their own.

Looking further than the end products themselves, it is apparent that design and technology has its own scholastic discipline that can be freely interpreted to cover whatever problem needs to be solved. These problems require students to develop whatever knowledge, understanding and physical and intellectual skills are necessary for the task in hand.

These web-pages are based on what is observed to be happening, in practice, in school classrooms, not on some theoretical model of an idealised subject.

This section of the site is based on practical evidence and sets out:

The discipline of design and technology

Design and technology and the aims of the national curriculum

Capabilities developed by design and technology

A teacher's perspective on design and technology.