Art and Design BTEC - Level 2 vs Level 3

So you or your child is nearing their last year of secondary school, and wants to study an Art and Design BTEC at college? But they have the choice to do either a Level 2 Diploma or a Level 3 Diploma.

So, what’s the difference?

Well, the official answer would be that Level 2 is equivalent to your Art & Design GCSE, whilst, Level 3 is equivalent to 3 A-Levels. Also, if you were wondering what the difference between a BTEC and A-Levels was? A BTEC is made up of course work, there are no exams. However, while there may be no exams, something many of you may be grateful for, there are deadlines.

On a BTEC, you work on a project for a set amount of time and are expected to create a final outcome based on a brief. The final outcome and all sketchbook work must be completed by the set deadline.

The projects and briefs are set out very similarly to how a brief from a client for a professional working artist would be. You have a project you are working on for a client, who expects a final result by a certain date.

This project is then marked and graded. the grades you get for each project are then combined, which results in the final grade for the whole course at the end of the year, or 2 years if you are doing Level 3.

As for the grading system of BTECs: you have a Pass (P) Merit (M) Distinction (D) and Distinction* (D*). Pass roughly equals a C, Merit a B, Distinction an A and Distinction* an A*.

But that's just the more academic side of things, there’s much more to it than that.

Bear in mind, that if you chose to start at Level 2, you can go on to do the Level 3 diploma. However, this means that you would do 3 years of college instead of just 2.

Having done both Level 2 and Level 3, personally, I would say the biggest difference is in the amount of independence you have. When I say independence, I mean the sense of how you layout your project and sketchbook, how much work you do, as well as your general ideas and concepts for a project.

Level 2 provides a great opportunity to learn basic skills and get used to being at college, especially for someone coming from a home educated background like me.

My first project at Level 2 focused on learning different drawing and painting techniques. How to create depth and texture in 2D art, as well as learning about various art movements and their influence on current art. Alongside this project, we worked on a photography project once a week. This taught me things such as viewpoint, the rule of thirds and composition. But, it also helped me improve on skills such as creating an atmosphere in photos and art.

You also have more time to complete assignments and tutors offer more guidance when it comes to your projects. A key aspect of Level 2, for me anyway, was that if you handed in an annotation or even a piece of work and the tutor wasn’t happy with it or it didn’t quite hit the targets of the brief, then you would be given time to redo it or make adjustments to get a higher mark. However, despite being allowed to do this, you were also expected to stay on top of your work. While the tutors would help as much as they could, if you fell behind in your project, it was up to you to catch up. So even though Level 2 is easier than Level 3. It is no excuse to be lazy and not do the work.

Another benefit of level 2, is if you need to retake English and or Maths, you have less work from your main Art Diploma. So you don’t feel as overwhelmed having to do both Art and Maths or English. I know from experience, as, in my first year of college, I had to retake Mathes. I also had a really good friend in my Level 2 class who had to retake Mathes and English. When compared to my Level 3 classmates who had to retake Mathes and English, it was a lot less work and less stress retaking Mathes and or English in Level 2 than in Level 3.

The students who didn't have to retake English or Maths in Level 3, often had more time to focus on their level 3 work, which allowed them to work more carefully and be more thorough.

These are all positive elements of starting at Level 2, but there are few negatives as well.

For me, the biggest downside is the amount of freedom and independence you have with your projects. As I mentioned earlier. Usually, in level 2, the projects are quite specific about what you can and can’t do, often you will have to drop or change a really good idea because it doesn’t fit the project brief.

And when it comes to the projects themselves, some of the work can be boring due to it being basic skills and techniques that you probably already learned from when you did your GCSE.

While you do have a great opportunity to experiment with new materials, you might get bored doing the tasks that require you to use materials you already know a lot about.

For example, at Level 2, I was able to learn how to properly work with oil pastels. But there was also a task where I had to do a few pages of detailed observation drawings. Now drawing is something I've always been very good, I'm also a very fast drawer. Meaning I Completed the task long before everyone else did and found it boringly easy.

Now in comparison, Level 3 offers a more challenging level of work, but naturally also requires more work, and you have less time to experiment with new materials.

In level 3, I find the projects incredible interesting and challenging, but more than that, I find I have more independence. You still have a brief you have to work too, but the tutors are more open about what you do with your project.

However, this also entails a lot of independent artist research. Developing ideas and concepts from independent research, such as doing museum and gallery trips outside of college and without your tutor telling you where to go and what to do. And then being able to justify how your ideas and research link and meet the requirements of the brief.

This being said, level 3 is not easy. You have less time to complete assignments and more assignments to complete. Everything has to be annotated in detail and your sketchbook has to evidence your entire thought process clearly and understandably. If someone who has no idea what your project is about were to look through your sketchbook and read your research and annotations, would they be able to understand how you got from point A to point B? Does everything link together and show how research and experimentation inspired you and helped you develop your ideas into a single concept that became your outcome?

And if you hand in an assignment and your tutor tells you to make adjustments to improve it, by then you would already have another 4 or 5 written assignments for that project to complete by the end of the week, along with a few annotations and a practical task or two.

If you’re not used to doing large amounts of writing in a creative subject or struggle with a large workload, level 3 can become very stressful very quickly. Not to mention, that if you struggle to write annotations, or don't know how to properly evaluate a piece of work, Level 3 is the place to try and learn.

At Level 2, my tutors often gave us what they called Evaluation Sheets. This was simply a sheet of paper with a list of questions to answer in an evaluation, as well as notes on how to write an in-depth and detailed evaluation.

At Level 3, you will often have at least 2 to 3 different projects at the same time, all of which require 100% of your effort to complete them. For example, in my first year of level 3, I had a photography project, a textiles project and a 3D design project running at the same time. This might not sound so bad considering some people study for up 8 GCSEs at a time. But it’s quite different having to keep up to date on 3 art projects, all of which require written work, practical work, educational trips, lectures, and final pieces, all evidenced clearly and in immense detail in a sketchbook.

Another key element that I think is significant, is the difference in the level of maturity.

At Level 2, while I made some great friends and definitely do not regret my choice. Quite a few of my classmates were very immature. I'm not talking class clown, fun-loving immature, I mean in their attitudes and actions. In Level 2, when a tutor asked a student to make adjustments to their work, some of them would have bad attitudes as they didn't want to add to something they had decided was finished. Even though the tutors were just trying to help the student improve their mark. They might also be unnecessarily disrespectful or purposely do something the tutor asked them not to do.

Because of this, the tutors would sometimes be very strict, and you might feel like you are being treated like a child despite your age and maturity. But this was also understandable based on how some of my classmates acted.

While in Level 3, I found my classmates to be more mature, more respectful and they had very good attitudes towards doing the work. Furthermore, there was a higher level of trust among the tutors, as they expected us all to act more like adults.

Understand that this was written based on my experience, at my College. apart from certain aspects, each course at each different college will be unique. You will have different tutors who will act differently and have their own expectations of students.

In the end, the choice of starting at Level 2 or Level 3 is completely up to you. Only you can decide where you want to start, but I do hope that this has given you a better idea of the differences between the two levels of study.