At Moorside High School, The Art curriculum helps us to make sense of the world we live in. We inspire our students to aspire through their learning experiences to standards of excellence intellectually, practically, and aesthetically. The curriculum we provide is rich in technical skills and knowledge in order to create independent thinkers, developing highly valuable and transferrable skills for future careers and life. We encourage students to develop well-informed opinions based on enquiry through the work of Artists and the diversity of cultures. Moreover, it enables them to develop a natural sense of wonder and curiosity about the world around them and therefore links strongly to our school values. Students explore their opinions when developing their own ideas making references to a number of Artists/ craftspeople across different time-periods and movement globally. Students are encouraged to make their own visual connections between Artist’s work considering how World events and History could impact on their work.

Our curriculum ensures students have the opportunity to develop their skills across the formal elements such as line, tone etc. and they apply that knowledge through experiencing a variety of media, techniques and processes over their studies. We actively encourage students to build confidence in their ideas through sharing their work with others, this creates an atmosphere whereby everyone’s opinion is respected and valued. Students are able to improve their work progressively though KS3 so that by the time KS4 arrives, students are open to new ideas and become independent in developing their work through critical discussion celebrating other cultures and encouraging diversity.

The impact of our Art Curriculum is that it equips students to be risk-takers, reflective and engaged learners who become competent Artists. Students have knowledge of art and culture, will have developed preferences and made choices which will have a positive life-long impact. Many of our students go on to further study doing AS/A-level and we have even had some go onto achieve 1^sts at degree level in Fine Art. GCSE AQA Art provides students the opportunity to develop a portfolio of work to show to prospective employers and help secure a place in higher education.

Curriculum Overview