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Secondary education

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Year 9 options - Textiles

5 replies

MoominmammasHandbag · 18/01/2010 10:19

My 14 year old daughter is very interested in fashion. She's brilliant at putting an outfit together and making budget stuff look amazing. She wants to be a stylist or a fashion buyer or have her own shop and she plans to do textiles or fashion at Uni.

At school it is compulsory that they choose a technology subject as one of their options. Problem is the technology teacher she is likely to get for GCSE is completely useless; gives them rubbish notes, does not explain techniques at all and even managed to lose the shirt my daughter made last year, without a word of apology.

I've been told that at A level, textiles becomes an Art option rather than a tech subject. In this case, can she get away without doing textiles GCSE or will she miss out on too much of the basics? She does a fair bit of sewing at home; customising stuff, making bags and soft toys. I imagine if she took graphics for her tech option she'd get an A - and she's not wildly academic so needs all the top grades she can get.

OP posts:
toast55 · 18/01/2010 10:30

My daughter is interested in gcse textiles too. anyone any experience.

DITDOT · 18/01/2010 20:49

I teach GCSE Textiles and hope I am not the teacher she is refering to. Ha ha.
At A level you can do Art/Textiles or pure Textiles although where I am you have to go to a 6th form to do pure Textiles and college for art/textiles.
Although your daughter does lots of sewing etc at home there are loads of skills that you may not do at home that are covered in the GCSE spec. Go to the aqa.org.uk website and find the GCSE specification and have a look at the skills they will cover.
There are the theory elements on fibres and fabrics that she will not/may not do at home along with all the dying and printing techniques. There are the industrial elements and also the access to CAD/CAM equipment.
Students who leave me to go onto A level come back and say they are glad they have such a wide range of skills and having to start from scratch at A level would have been very difficult and maybe reduced their grades for projects.
Also students who choose textiles for GCSE usually really want to do it rather than a group of Y9's that have students that really dislike it. This can affect the group dynamics and the teachers approach to the subject.
I always say to Y9 students to go and speak with Y10 currently doing it and get the real view from them.
Hope this helps. Will keep checking back to see if you need any more info.

MmeBlueberry · 18/01/2010 20:53

Art Textiles completely different to Textiles Tech. You can pick it up from scratch at A-level. I know a girl who hadn't been near a sewing machine until Y12 and she got full marks in both her AS and A2 art textiles.

MoominmammasHandbag · 18/01/2010 21:57

So have I got this straight - Art Textiles A level is doable without Textiles GCSE, but for pure Textiles A level she would be better doing the GCSE Textiles?
In that case I need to check on what A levels are available don't I? And do a bit more asking around.
Thanks for your help DITDOT and MmeBlueberry

OP posts:
DITDOT · 19/01/2010 15:13

That is how I would sum it up moomin.

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