Megan Taylor is Director of Highgate’s Design Technology and Engineering (DTE) department. Here she explains more about our approach to teaching across the whole school, alongside the need to be more sustainable in our practice.
What’s the approach to teaching DTE at Highgate?
We teach DTE across the whole foundation to help support STEM learning. Pre-Prep pupils take part in activities such as building spaghetti towers or designing butterfly wings to learn the basics of Design and Engineering. The Junior School have their own DTE facilities, and I help their Head of STEM with the curriculum. From Year 6, pupils are taught by Senior School DTE teachers, so they have a smooth transition as they move into Year 7.
In Year 7 and 8, pupils take three lessons a fortnight and from Year 9 they have a double lesson per fortnight before they choose their options. DTE is taught at GCSE from Year 10, with around 50-70 pupils taking the exam each year. In the Sixth Form, we offer Product Design and Design Engineering as separate A level courses, with around 35 students, which has increased over the last few years.
DTE can be perceived as a male dominated industry, how do we encourage girls to pursue the subject?
Most of my peers on my Design degree at university were male, but it didn’t deter me from pursuing the subject. As a female Head of DTE at a co-educational school, I want to inspire the girls and boys to show them that you can pursue the subjects you love, whatever your gender. Having positive female role models in our teaching staff and pupil body is important to inspire younger pupils from an early age.
Girls are achieving just as much as the boys here, whether they’re entering competitions as all girl teams or as mixed gender, they have the confidence to take part. At A level, there’s nearly a 50/50 gender split and having introduced Product Design A level two years ago, we’ve seen more girls taking up the subject.
What facilities and equipment do we have at Highgate?
Both Art and DTE are taught in the Mills Centre, which is a creative hub of studios. We have two state-of-the art workshops featuring metal fabrication, metal casting, laser cutters, 3D printers and plastic manufacturing, including a recycling machine. We have a designated engineering space which includes university level facilities such as Testometric machines for material analysis and high-end pneumatics equipment. There’s even a garage where pupils can practice on real cars! Everyone in the team has different skill sets from their industry experience which is a real advantage for pupils to learn from.
The Mills Centre is a great crossover point between the creative subjects, and we really encourage students to interact and collaborate. They are learning skills that they’ll use in their professional careers, where different people work together across many disciplines.
What do you think will be the key technological changes that pupils will need to be prepared for in the future?
Automated manufacturing is rapidly changing with new systems replacing traditional methods. We’re teaching pupils to gain a deeper understanding of how these machines work and the fundamentals of materials manufacturing. Pupils have access to CAD/CAM (computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing), laser cutters and 3D printers from Year 5, all the way through into Year 13.
I’m a big advocate for advances in technology. We encourage pupils to use automated manufacturing and AI to help the design process but not forgetting the fundamental skills of problem solving, risk-taking, teamwork and collaboration. We teach pupils how to program from Year 6 and by the time they get to Year 13 they’re at an advanced level. There’s lots of cross-over with computing and we use programming in DTE to make physical products. Pupils still love making in the workshop, there’s a sense of achievement when they design something from start to finish.
User centred design is central to DTE, creating solutions for real problems, particularly for people with a disability. It’s important for pupils to meet people who face life challenges. We invite guest speakers like Alex Lewis, a quadruple amputee, and Justin Levine who is paralysed, and set pupils a project to design products to help them.
What is the department’s approach to sustainability?
We’re living in a time where we need to be more conscious about our material use and we are embedding sustainability within our teaching practice. Plastics have had a huge impact on manufacturing, but we know they are bad for the environment. At Highgate, we’re taking old plastic products used within the school such as the yoghurt pots for lunch, and we recycle them to make new products such as hair combs, soap dishes or cup coasters. Year 7 have a project which involves a simple plastic milk bottle, and we ask them to think about how they can upcycle it for another function. This helps them to understand the circular making process.
What co-curricular opportunities are available?
One of the most popular clubs is VEX Robotics – it’s educational but also fun for teams to design mini robots that compete against each other. This year we had seven teams compete at the national competition and one team through to the world finals. At Sustainable Products club, Year 7 and 8 pupils learn how to use recycled plastic to create items, and we have drop-in design clubs on Wednesday lunchtime for pupils to come and work on their own creative project with our staff supervising them.
From Years 9-10, Design Engineering club allows pupils to make things like robots and brushless motors, and Air Monitoring Club is led by a Year 12 student who is building devices to capture the air quality across the school. Senior pupils can also take part in the CANSAT competition which is a national school challenge to design and build a simulation of a real satellite. This year a team of five girls from Year 12 got to the nationals and won the ‘Outstanding Science Mission’ award.
Where do pupils who have studied DTE go on to study or work?
Our alumni study and work in a range of professions within automotive and design engineering, electrical and computer engineering and product design. Degree apprenticeships are a good option, with some of our students going to Dyson and Jaguar Land Rover. We’re always pleased to have graduates and other professionals come in and speak about their career path to show that there are lots of interesting opportunities beyond school.
