SIXTH FORM

A-Level Business

Course Entry Requirements:

A grade 5 in GCSE Mathematics AND a grade 5 in GCSE English.

General Course Description:

The A-level Business course introduces you to all you need to know about working in business, providing a solid foundation for further study. With a focus on helping you to become a good decision maker, you’ll learn essential managerial skills, alongside techniques to help you become an analytical problem solver. These skills are all highly sought after and valued in a wide range of careers.

Career Pathways 

If you’d like to study business, finance or management at university, A-level Business provides an excellent foundation. The skills you learn are transferable across a broad range of subjects and careers. Whatever you choose to do in the future, you’ll find that the things you learn in this course will help. For example, you’ll probably work with lots of different people, so knowledge of motivational theory will help you to work well with others and help them achieve their potential. You might have ambitious plans to start your own business. If that’s the case,  you’ll find the marketing and finance topics particularly useful.

Units 

Year 12 provides an introduction to key business areas: marketing, operations, finance and human resource management. This includes a special focus on decision making – particularly how decisions made in one area can affect the rest of the business. 

 Content 

Theme 1 – Marketing & People

·         Meeting customer needs

·         The market

·         Marketing mix & strategy

·         Managing people

·         Entrepreneurs & leaders

Theme 2 – Managing Business Activities

·         Raising finance

·         Financial planning

·         Managing finance

·         Resource management

·         External influences

Theme 3 – Business Decisions & Strategy

·         Business objectives & strategy

·         Business growth

·         Decision-making techniques

·         Influences on business decisions

·         Assessing competitiveness

·         Managing change

Theme 4 – Global Business

·         Globalisation

·         Global markets & business expansion

·         Global marketing

·         Global industries & companies

Board: Edexcel

 Year 13 builds on the decision making element of the first year of the course, with an investigation of the strategic decisions that all businesses have to make.

Assessment 

The course is assessed at the end of Year 13 with three two hour examinations. Paper 1 assesses Themes 1 & 4 and is worth 35% of the course. Paper 2 assesses Themes 2 & 3 and is worth 35% of the course. Paper 3 is a synoptic paper assessing all four themes and will draw questions from an annual “pre-released context”. The papers will include shorter answer, calculations and essay questions.

Note – It is advisable to avoid the combination of Business and Economics. The University of Warwick advises ‘breadth of subjects is valued by our selectors and therefore subjects with significantly overlapping curricula should be avoided where possible, for example economics and business studies’ And the London School of Economics and Political Science states ‘the combination of business studies and economics as two separate A-levels is best avoided.’