IB Visual Arts

Applications Open - 12 November 2025

Applications Close - 12 April 2026

Entry Requirements - All entry requirements can be found in our course directory here.

How to Apply - To apply for Post-16 at Sir Geoffrey Leigh Academy, please follow the link to Applicca, our admissions registration form: https://sgla.applicaa.com/inyear

Subject Aims:

- Enjoy lifelong engagement with the arts

- Become informed, reflective and critical practitioners in the arts

- Understand the dynamic and changing nature of the arts

- Explore and value the diversity of the arts across time, place and cultures

- Express ideas with confidence and competence

- Develop perceptual and analytical skills

- Make artwork that is influenced by personal and cultural contexts

- Become informed and critical observers and makers of visual culture and media

- Develop skills, techniques and processes in order to communicate concepts and ideas

Course Content:

Students should, as a minimum, experience working with at least three art-making forms,; two-dimensional forms, three-dimensional forms, lens-based, electronic and screen-based forms.

Assessment Objectives:

1. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of specified content (a. Identify various contexts in which the visual arts can be created and presented b. Describe artwork from differing contexts, and identify the ideas, conventions and techniques employed by the art-makers c. Recognize the skills, techniques, media, forms and processes associated with the visual arts d. Present work, using appropriate visual arts language, as appropriate to intentions)

2. Demonstrate application and analysis of knowledge and understanding (a. Express concepts, ideas and meaning through visual communication b. Analyse artworks from a variety of different contexts c. Apply knowledge and understanding of skills, techniques, media, forms and processes related to artmaking)

3. Demonstrate synthesis and evaluation (a. Critically analyse and discuss artworks created by themselves and others and articulate an informed personal response b. Formulate personal intentions for the planning, development and making of artworks that consider how meaning can be conveyed to an audience c. Demonstrate the use of critical reflection to highlight success and failure in order to progress work d. Evaluate how and why art-making evolves and justify the choices made in their own visual practice)

4. Select, use and apply a variety of appropriate skills and techniques (a. Experiment with different media, materials and techniques in art-making b. Make appropriate choices in the selection of images, media, materials and techniques in art-making c. Demonstrate technical proficiency in the use and application of skills, techniques, media, images, forms and processes d. Produce a body of resolved and unresolved artworks as appropriate to intentions)

5+ GCSE 9-4 grades

Grade 4 English Language or Literature

Grade 4 in Art and Design (Fine Art, Photography, Graphics, Craft)

External assessment

Part 1: Comparative study 20%

Students at SL analyse and compare different artworks by different artists. This

independent critical and contextual investigation explores artworks, objects and artifacts

from differing cultural contexts.

Part 2: Process portfolio 40%

Students at SL submit carefully selected materials which evidence their experimentation, exploration, manipulation and refinement of a variety of visual arts activities during the two-year course.

Internal assessment

Part 3: Exhibition 40%

Students at SL submit for assessment a selection of resolved artworks from their

exhibition. The selected pieces should show evidence of their technical accomplishment

during the visual arts course and an understanding of the use of materials, ideas and

practices appropriate to visual communication.