Business Studies sits within the Humanities Faculty.

 

Business studies give students the opportunity to explore the nature and progress of businesses in a dynamic, changing and competitive environment.

 

Mr Twycross will tell you a little bit more about the whole faculty.

KEY STAGE 4 GCSE IN BUSINESS STUDIES

Students learn about how small businesses are developed and discover how businesses promote themselves and keep their customers happy.
They also learn how businesses manage both their finances and the people who work for them. Students take a critical approach to business to develop skills and understanding required such as business communication and the ethics of sustainability of business.
Studying business encourages students to be inspired, moved and challenged and prepares them to make informed decisions about further learning opportunities and career choices.

The topics that are covered:

● Topic 1.1 Enterprise and entrepreneurship
● Topic 1.2 Spotting a business opportunity
● Topic 1.3 Putting a business idea into practice
● Topic 1.4 Making the business effective
● Topic 1.5 Understanding external influences on business
● Topic 2.1 Growing the business
● Topic 2.2 Making marketing decisions
● Topic 2.3 Making operational decisions
● Topic 2.4 Making financial decisions
● Topic 2.5 Making human resource decisions

Exam board for GCSE Business (edexcel)

KEY STAGE 5
  • We teach the AQA Economics Specification. Our approach to Economics is to apply economic theory to support analysis of current economic problems and issues, and encourage students to appreciate the interrelationships between microeconomics and macroeconomics.
  • Content takes into account fundamental advances and changes in economic ideas such as behavioural economics, importance of financial markets and development economics, so that students can relate what they are learning to the world around them.

Some good textbooks for the course are:

• AQA A-level Economics Fourth Edition, Ray Powell, James Powell; ISBN: 9781510451957

• Economics AQA Sixth Edition, Alain Anderton; ISBN: 9780993133107

Some other good publications for the course are:

• Economic review; ISSN 0265-0290

• Nudge, Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein; ISBN: 9780143115267

• Maths Skills for A Level Economics, Jim Lawrence; ISBN: 9781408527085

Some habits possessed by bad economists are:

– Pointing to a graph where two lines intersect and use this to reason why the poor should starve.

– Thinking that if work does not contribute to GDP (eg raising children) then it is not economic activity.

– Confusing ‘normal profit’ with ‘no profit for the entrepreneur’. A firm can be making an accounting loss but be making an economic profit. This is not GCSE Business!

– Avoiding reading.

– Not practicing the maths.

– Not practicing the diagrams.

– Thinking that economics is the science of making you personally rich.

– Confusing correlation and causation.

– Saying things like “this is good for the economy” or “this is good for the country”. The economy is made of lots of different stakeholders with different and conflicting objectives.

– Asserting that things that make intuitive sense to you are true, but use no evidence. Personal anecdotes are not evidence.

– Avoiding answering questions in case they get the answer wrong.

– Confusing ‘good for the economy’ with ‘government spending less money’ or ‘government raising more taxation’.