One of the most enjoyable things about art is how subjective it is. No two opinions on a piece of artwork will be the same. Teachers often talk of Reading for Pleasure. I am a strong advocate of Viewing Art for Pleasure. Responding to art is one of life’s great joys. The key here is discussion. Discussions around artworks need to be planned well within a broader curriculum that emphasizes vocabulary, language, and the value of talk. In its simplest form, this could just be as simple as a pupil saying what they can see in front of them but with careful modelling and the right school culture, it can lead to powerful discourse in the classroom. 

I have created an entire term’s worth of artwork of the week class assemblies. There is a mixture of artworks throughout history with a little bit of art history and some reflective questions to get pupils talking and experiencing art. They could easily be used across primary and secondary.

Skills progression has an important part to play in designing a well-rounded art curriculum but what does the term ‘skills progression’ actually mean?

In its most basic form, it is essentially advancing pupils through a series of simple steps that becomes progressively more advanced in order to develop proficiency in more complex skills.

The national curriculum’s coverage of art and DT in primary feels very vague. It barely covers a page and some of the statements are so broad it can be difficult to think about how that looks in terms of progression and learning.