The Grade 12 PAT

The Grade 12 PAT

The Grade 12 PAT carries 25% of the final promotion mark — a quarter of the subject, produced over three terms rather than in one examination.

What Grade 12 adds. The design problem is genuinely open, the research must be substantial, and the presentation drawings must be to full working standard: correct convention, sections where needed, complete dimensioning from datums, tolerances where they matter, an assembly drawing with a parts list, and a CAD presentation alongside the instrument work.

The portfolio is the evidence. It must show the process, not just the outcome: the brief, the research and its analysis, the rejected concepts with reasons, the evaluation, the development, and the final drawings.

Manage it as a project. Three terms is enough time and also easy to lose. Each phase has a deadline; missing Phase 1 compresses everything after it, and the drawings are the part that cannot be rushed.

Worked example. A portfolio with excellent final drawings but a thin research and evaluation section loses marks in the criteria those sections carry — and those criteria are worth more than draughting quality alone.

Core checkpoint: The PAT assesses a design process. Drawings are its final evidence, not its whole substance.