Business

Business Department Curriculum Intent

The overriding ambition of our Business curriculum is to support the school vision of enabling every child to achieve more than they think they are capable of achieving.

The overall aim of our curriculum delivery is to help our students gain the necessary skills to be able to take their place in the financial and non-financial world of work and be prepared for the jobs of the future. We aim to do this by following the A Level specification, which gives students the necessary technical skills to achieve strong grades and progress to university.

As part of our curriculum, we aim to instil in our students a passion for Business though bringing real world economic issues into our lessons, encouraging students to conduct regular outside research and providing them with curriculum enhancement opportunities such as educational trips to the Bank of England and outside speakers from various financial institutions. This in term fosters transferrable skills like problem solving, team working and making judgements.

At Key Stage 4, we follow the OCR Cambridge National course in Enterprise and Marketing. The aim of delivering this course is to help our students gain an in-depth understanding of business acumen and the skills needed to run a successful business. Students are introduced to a wide range of business examples through case studies and understanding how key functional areas operate within a business. Students learn about techniques businesses use to understand their market and develop products, investigate what makes a product viable and understand how businesses attract and retain customers. The course has both an examination and vocational element, which complements A-Level or vocational courses students may take in Key Stage 5.

At A-Level we follow the AQA specification for Business. We do so as we feel that the specification and assessment are suitably challenging and interesting for the students. We also have over a decade of marking experience in the department with AQA so we feel this gives our students the best possible access to their study of these subjects.

We enter students for the AQA AS Business examinations; this gives students the benefit of the added rigour of the externally assessed exams, while the content and skills required map very well on to the overall A Level curriculum. The Year 13 Scheme of Work builds on the work the students have done in preparation for their AS examinations.

Business Curriculum Map