Subject · Year 7 to A Level
Art & Design teaching resources
Everything the site has for Art & Design in one place. A subject playbook, schemes of work, exam board playbooks, knowledge organisers, knowledge mats, A Level revision guides, key terms and free revision posters. Written inside a school, not a consultancy, and built from the published subject content and each board’s own specification.
Where to start
Start with your stage
Art teaching resources for UK secondary schools, by what you are planning this term. The exam guides quote each board’s specification and say which board they cover; the schemes of work are board-neutral. Read before publication by serving senior leaders, in school.
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Key Stage 3 Art resources
Planning Years 7 to 9? Start with the schemes of work: six sequenced units a year, each with its outcome, artists and vocabulary. Add the knowledge organisers so students have the words for every unit.
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GCSE Art resources
Teaching Years 10 and 11? The scheme is a board-neutral two-year course that builds the portfolio and prepares the externally set assignment. Add the guide for your exam board, revision sheets and free posters for the wall.
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A Level Art resources
Teaching Years 12 and 13? The scheme runs the personal investigation and the externally set assignment across two years. Each exam board has its own guide to how it marks.
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Art department resources
Leading the department? One handbook for the head of art and the whole team: curriculum, sketchbooks, assessment and moderation, twenty artists, the four exam boards and four templates.
Guides for Art teachers
- A KS3 art curriculum map: what to teach in Years 7, 8 and 9, and why in that order Three years of half-termly units. The order is the argument: each unit builds what the next one assumes.
- GCSE art assessment objectives, AO1 to AO4, explained for teachers Four objectives, a quarter each, in the same words on every board. What differs is the mark scheme, and the plain question each objective is really asking.
- GCSE art annotation: what earns marks, and the three-clause stem that fixes it Weak annotation is rarely careless. It describes what a moderator can already see. This is the difference, shown on one experiment annotated four ways.
- Art moderation and standardisation: four dates and a 45-minute meeting Moderation rarely finds that a department marked badly. It finds that it marked inconsistently, and the adjustment then applies to every student.
Questions Art teachers ask
Are the Art schemes of work tied to one exam board?
No. The GCSE and A Level schemes are board-neutral: they are built on the DfE subject content and Ofqual’s four assessment objectives, so they work whichever board your department follows. The exam guides are the board-specific part: one each for AQA, Pearson Edexcel and OCR.
Which year groups do the Art schemes of work cover?
Years 7 to 11, plus a two-year A Level scheme. Each KS3 and GCSE year is a set of half-termly units in teaching order, and every unit names its end outcome, core skills, key artists and key vocabulary.
Is there anything free for Art teachers?
Yes: two sets of free A3 GCSE posters. One shows the four assessment objectives and what each is worth; the other is a sketchbook reference for artist research pages.
Do you cover WJEC Eduqas?
The department handbook compares all four boards, including WJEC Eduqas. There is not yet a separate Eduqas exam guide; the exam guides cover AQA, Pearson Edexcel and OCR at GCSE and A Level.
Is there something for a head of art, not just for the classroom?
Yes. The secondary art department handbook is written for the head of art and the whole team: curriculum design, sketchbooks, assessment and moderation, tracking, the four exam boards, and templates for a department self-audit and a moderation record.