Our collective recommendations to policymakers

Our collective recommendations to policymakers

The Government’s Creative Industries Sector Vision highlights concerns regarding the fall in D&T, and both the House of Lords Digital and Communications Committee and Education for 11–16 Year Olds Committee called for the Department for Education to take urgent action to tackle the decline. However, no steps have yet been announced to address the fall in student numbers.

Our recommendations are presented here as a unifying, shared call for action for the first time, building on previous recommendations made by the Institution for Engineering and Technology, the Design & Technology Association, Creative Education Manifesto, EngineeringUK, Save our Subjects and many others.

The incoming government must target change on two fronts:

– In its first year, stem the flow of teachers and students leaving the subject and ensure that D&T’s future as a core curriculum subject is secure.

– By the end of the Parliament to forge an ambitious, forward-looking future for design as the jewel in the crown of a reimagined British education system - a core competency that develops creative problem-solving, technical knowledge, material intelligence, critical thinking and making ability, focused on the needs of our future economy and society.

1 - Refine and renew the D&T subject content for 11-18 year-olds, aligning it to inclusive innovation and sustainability.

Despite examples of excellent practice across the UK, D&T has struggled to find its place as a modern, high-value subject in most schools. Government and the sector must work together, building on the existing work, to implement a curriculum development plan so that D&T truly equips students to address global challenges and meet student, HE, FE, and industry needs. This should be supported by improving awareness among young people and their carers of the huge range of career opportunities design opens up.

2 - Develop and implement a funded strategy for D&T teacher recruitment, training, CPD and retention.

There is an acute and growing shortage of specialist teachers across the subject area. D&T teacher recruitment and retention is at crisis level, with only 25% of the D&T recruitment target met each year. This means millions earmarked for training bursaries goes unspent every year. The Department for Education must now reinvest this money – worth approximately £20 million annually –in tangible interventions to support and develop the profession,8 for instance, developing an equivalent to the Engineers Teach Physics.

3 - Consider D&T in any reform of school accountability, performance and inspection measures.

Together the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) subject set and Progress 8 accountability measure have contributed to the marginalisation of D&T, among other creative and technical subjects, in schools. Policymakers should explore how reform of these measures could support design education.9 A review of secondary school Ofsted assessment criteria could better incentivise all schools to teach a broad and balanced curriculum would also be beneficial, building on the success Ofsted has achieved at primary level. Additionally, the government should push for creative thinking to be permanently embedded in the OECD’s PISA framework so that design excellence is appropriately measured and valued.

4 - Put design at the heart of a reformed broad, balanced and creative curriculum.

Design suffers from exclusive delivery as a subject when the concepts and skills it develops are cross-curricular in nature.10 D&T’s decline is symptomatic of a curriculum that isn’t designed to adequately deliver our future skills needs. The government must conduct an ambitious and holistic curriculum and assessment review. In addition to the specialised design subjects (D&T and art, craft and design), design’s role as a foundational ‘skill for life’ like oracy should be woven through all subjects, with design-based challenges used to bring other subjects alive through applying a creative, hands-on, problem-solving approach to real-world issues.