This case study illustrates a school that has a well-established course in electronics leading to GCSE.
All Saints is one of two RC high schools serving Sheffield and is located very near the busy centre of the city. A recent applicant for Sports College status the school has approximately 1000 pupils in year groups from Y7 to Y13. The normal area of the school encompasses 32 feeder primary or junior schools from across the city. The ability range is lower than its rival RC school which serves the southern, more affluent, end of the city.
A full range of courses is taught up to GCSE including D&T Resistant Materials, Food Technology, Textiles and Electronic Products. The D&T staff are mostly in their earlier years of teaching and of the 6.5 D&T staff in the department only two are male. Consequently women teachers are heavily involved with teaching electronics at KS3.
A KS4 course in Electronic Products is well established and attracts about 48 candidates each year. Two groups are taught by the Head of Department, Paul Sharpe, who is proud of the department's examination record which has seen A*-C Grades at GCSE in D&T rise from 29% to 68% in the 6 years he has been at the school.
All Saint's RC High School, Sheffield
"During my time as Head of Department we have improved our GCSE dramatically and now lead the school in our A-C scores. Our courses in 'Electronic Products' have been particularly successful and whilst we cater for 48 pupils each year in two groups, we could run with many more if we had resources enough to satisfy the course demand. We are very limited however in the facilities we have at our disposal and hope that extra space can be made available if we are successful in our bid for Sports College status.
Currently, we have severe constraints imposed by our shortage of accommodation which comprises two multimedia rooms, a graphics room (we reluctantly share with art/pottery) and two food technology rooms. We have no dedicated ICT suite, so all our IT is done within the rooms and workshops that we have available. We have created 'areas' or 'corners' in our rooms where computers are sited. This means protecting them from dust with plastic covers and fortunately we have had no breakdown problems to date. The big advantage is that we have enough computers in each room for a class of 24 to share one between two!
Our success at GCSE is based around a popular KS3 course running through Y7, 8 and 9. To cater for our intake we have 9 groups across the year, which we split into two sections, one of 4 groups and the other of 5 - each group having about 24 pupils. The time allocated to each of the D&T subjects is slightly disproportionate due to the vagaries of the timetable system. In Y7 and 8 some pupils get 8 weeks of 2 hours per week whilst others get 10 weeks of 2 hours per week.
The pupils are all in mixed ability groups based on the results of Y6 tests. The tests are based on general literacy and non-verbal reasoning. We select on these results and a balance of gender.
