Photography A Level

Applications Open – Open Now!

Applications Close – 31 March 2025. Late applications may still be accepted, please contact us for more information

Entry Requirements – Generally 5 GCSE's at 5-9 including English and Mathematics

How to Apply – Please apply via KentChoices and make sure to add a minimum of 3 courses to your application.

This advanced level course allows students to experience and explore a wide variety of artistic approaches to Photography. Students will study a range of historical, modern and contemporary starting points including educational visits to galleries and other places of interest.

Students will be expected to create and extend a collection of work which demonstrates their ability to sustain work from an individual starting point to a realisation.

This will include learning how to research, analyse and develop ideas as well as materials, techniques and processes in a meaningful way related to contextual studies.

Students working in this course will be given opportunities to work within the following areas: Experimental processes, digital media, darkroom photographic processing.

Many past students have gone on to study Art and Photography courses into Further and Higher Education at some of the most prestigious Art Colleges in the country. This course enables students to develop creative transferable skills which will see them develop into employable young people.

Year 1
September to April
The first part of the course is a non-examined knowledge and skills building experience where students deepen their artistic, contextual and analytical experiences in a wide range of workshops.

April to July
Students begin their Unit 1:
Personal Investigation (60%). This is an in depth study of students choice building on the knowledge and skills they have developed in the experimental part of the year. This study will take them into year 2 and will build to become and in depth personal research project which extends and secures their knowledge skills and understanding with their chosen field.

Year 2
September to January
Completion of Unit 1: Personal Investigation. Students will consolidate their thinking and develop their breath of study further in their chosen subject matter and towards an outcome piece or pieces.

January to May
Unit 2: Controlled assessment (40%)
A 15 hour examination follows a number of week’s preparation on studies leading from a selected question as set on the exam paper. Students develop a unit of work based on their chosen question and create an outcome from this in the timed period.

Students must have a grade 5 or Higher in GCSE Photography as well as a grade 5 in English Language GCSE, and a passion for the subject.