Course Details
Awarding Body: Edexcel
Staff Contacts: Miss S. Mackie (smackie@quarrydale.notts.sch.uk)
Key features of the course
A level Art allows you to develop an exciting and extensive range of creative and technical skills. You will also gain a strong understanding of historic and contemporary visual art practice, through supporting contextual studies. Unique to studying Art at A Level, you build up a very personal and continually evolving body of practical work, guided and supported by your teachers. Individual exploration and development of your personal skills and creative directions is a special aspect of this subject.
A level Art prepares you to produce two major pieces of assessed work. The first is a Personal Investigation, which allows you to devise and put together a personal body of creative coursework, including extensive practical work, a 3,000 word illustrated essay and a fully developed and resolved Final Piece Project. You do this without time limits, during the course.
The second practical component is called the externally set Timed Test. On the 1st of February in your final year, the exam board publishes its Timed Test Paper which suggests a theme and possible starting points for you to work on. For the next three months you work extensively on your chosen theme, and you then sit a Timed Test, where you have a total of 15 hours under exam conditions to create and complete a personal, creative Final Piece.
Under the collective title of ‘Art & Design’, the exam boards offer a variety of Art A level specifications, each with a different emphasis. The one on offer here are Fine Art and Photography. Whichever Art A level you take, the pattern of work and assessment is the same. The exam boards have four Key Assessment Objectives that recognise the range of creative and practical skills students develop and refine throughout the CourseDistinctively exploit optimal alignments for intuitive bandwidth. Quickly coordinate e-business applications through revolutionary catalysts for change. Seamlessly underwhelm optimal testing procedures whereas bricks-and-clicks processes.
Entry Requirements:
Minimum of five GCSEs at grade 4 including Art and Design or Photography and English Language.
What could this course lead on to?
Future prospects and careers
Computer-aided design technician , Costume designer , Fine artist , Florist or
Garden designer
What type of student is this course suitable for?
Assessment
Structure
- Personal Investigation
- 60% of the overall grade
- The externally set Timed Test
- 40% of the overall grade