{"id":280287,"date":"2026-06-24T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/24\/why-design-and-technology-education-needs-a-shake-up\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T06:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T10:10:13","slug":"why-design-and-technology-education-needs-a-shake-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/24\/why-design-and-technology-education-needs-a-shake-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Why design and technology education needs a shake up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.creativebloq.com\/design\/why-design-and-technology-education-needs-a-shake-up\">Why design and technology education needs a shake up<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.creativebloq.com\/design\/why-design-and-technology-education-needs-a-shake-up\">https:\/\/www.creativebloq.com\/design\/why-design-and-technology-education-needs-a-shake-up<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-24 06:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.creativebloq.com\">www.creativebloq.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-6a5535df-8bf0-4147-abef-f0e6cbc29f51\">Think back to your school days. I have two questions for you. Firstly, how was creativity promoted in your school? Was it valued and promoted on a par with academic subjects, or was it viewed as a \u2018nice to have\u2019 entity, a kind of release from some of the \u2018more serious work\u2019?<\/p>\n<p>My second question is: when you were studying a range of subjects at school (for GCSE, for example), what effort did the teachers make to explain why you were learning the content presented to you and how it might be useful to you in life and work thereafter?<\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-6a5535df-8bf0-4147-abef-f0e6cbc29f51-2\">I host a podcast where I talk with professionals across a range of creative sectors (Designed for Life &#8211; shamelessly promoted). So many have told me they loved design and technology at school but only realised late (sometimes at university) that they could make a living from designing, solving \u2018real-world\u2019 problems, modelling and prototyping, and thinking creatively. Activities they had, up until the moment of revelation, thought were an interesting pastime, a hobby perhaps, but no more.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"inline-flex items-center gap-1.5 text-sm font-article-heading capitalize leading-5 text-white whitespace-nowrap\"><span class=\"jwp-carousel-title-mobile\"\/><span class=\"jwp-carousel-title-desktop\">Latest Videos From<\/span><span class=\"jwp-carousel-brand inline-flex items-center\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/span><\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.creativebloq.com\/media\/img\/creativebloq_logo.svg\" alt=\"\" class=\"max-h-12 w-auto\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Yet when you take design, engineering and manufacturing together, these sectors contribute a conservative \u00a3530 million to UK GDP and employ somewhere between 1:4 and 1:5 of the UK working population. I think you will agree that these figures make them more than an interesting pastime, something to fill the quiet hours; they make design, engineering and manufacturing a mainstay of the UK economy.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"the-decline-of-d-t-3\">The decline of D&#038;T<\/h2>\n<p class=\"vanilla-image-block\" style=\"padding-top:66.67%;\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"school kids with design and technology tote bags\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/yrajRgSuBdLLxsGVb2WnqS-1200-80.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/yrajRgSuBdLLxsGVb2WnqS-1024-80.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/yrajRgSuBdLLxsGVb2WnqS-970-80.jpg 970w, https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/yrajRgSuBdLLxsGVb2WnqS-650-80.jpg 650w, https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/yrajRgSuBdLLxsGVb2WnqS-480-80.jpg 480w, https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/yrajRgSuBdLLxsGVb2WnqS-320-80.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 1000px) 970px, calc(100vw - 40px)\" loading=\"lazy\" data-new-v2-image=\"true\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/yrajRgSuBdLLxsGVb2WnqS.jpg\" data-pin-media=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/yrajRgSuBdLLxsGVb2WnqS.jpg\" class=\"rounded-[var(--image--border-radius,0)] inline\"\/>\n<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">(Image credit: D&#038;T Association)<\/span><\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-a2c7da92-a0d7-4903-b7ff-0e062c92a9b2\">So why, in recent years, have we seen the decline of design and technology education in our schools nationally? Some figures here might help: In 2009, the subject saw almost 306,000 GCSE entries nationally; last year, this figure was 79,000.<\/p>\n<p>        <span class=\"\n            flex\n            after:content-[''] after:flex-1 after:ml-4 after:my-[0.7rem] after:border-t after:border-solid after:border-t-[#ccc]\n            before:content-[''] before:flex-1 before:mr-4 before:my-[0.7rem] before:border-t before:border-solid before:border-t-[#ccc]\n            font-article-heading pb-0 text-[length:var(--article-river-title--font-size,1em)] uppercase sm:text-[length:var(--article-river-title--font-size,0.875em)] font-bold\n        \"><br \/>\n            You may like<br \/>\n        <\/span><\/p>\n<p>In 2009, the subject had just over 15,500 trained D&#038;T teachers in service in schools; we (The Design &#038; Technology Association) currently estimate this number to be around 6,300.<\/p>\n<p>Given this&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.creativebloq.com\/design\/why-design-and-technology-education-needs-a-shake-up\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why design and technology education needs a shake up https:\/\/www.creativebloq.com\/design\/why-design-and-technology-education-needs-a-shake-up Publish Date: 2026-06-24 06:00:00 Source&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":280288,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/wR2uQjZLkCcAS8HbXk5ixS-2560-80.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280290,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280287\/revisions\/280290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}