St. Mary's

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Business Studies

Statement of Intent

Business Studies at St Marys is a very popular and successful subject and one of the most interesting, relevant and varied subjects available. Business is all around us and we are all consumers who are impacted by business or government decisions. The Business curriculum is designed to inspire students, leading them to discover, question and understand businesses, both in the present day and the future. Business students might see the path into employment, entrepreneurship or further study from the creative and informative learning journey they undertake. Newspaper and television headlines offer continual reminders of how important the business world is to us all. In recent years much attention has been directed to issues such as fair trade, business ethics, global warming and the credit crunch. Television programmes like “The Apprentice” and “Dragons’ Den” show how exciting it can be to be involved in business. At Level 2 you will become skilled in making decisions, being creative, solving problems, understanding finance, dealing with data, communicating and working as part of a team. This course can help you prepare for further and higher education. At Level 3 students study the Cambridge Technical Extended Certificate which is one of the most successful Vocational subjects run by the Academy. Students can either start from scratch or build upon the knowledge they learnt at Level 2 in order to deepen their knowledge of the business world and prepare them for either higher education or to enter industry.

Curriculum Map

Year 10 Overview

In Year 10 students complete their first unit of coursework in order to ensure they are engaged with a subject they have not studied prior to Level 2. The coursework learning objectives run in order as this is the nature of the coursework they complete and prior tasks are required and the tasks following build from this knowledge and research. R065 must be completed before the students are able to begin R066 as this uses the previous work to create and inform their pitch.

Business Studies complete their exam in the January series and therefore begin to study for the exam within year 10. At this point students have grown in their knowledge and maturity to allow them to achieve. R064 has been designed to take them through a journey of starting a business by asking them to consider the type of ownership they would start, moving to considering a fully formed business plan and the functional areas. Student then look at the role of the finance and how they would fund their business.

Year 10 Topics
Subject Overviews
Year 11 Overview

In year 11 the students develop their understanding of business by focusing on the marketing department, including, monitoring the life cycle of their product and differentiating it along with how they would price and promote the products before considering the impacts of external factors.

Students then continue to complete their R066 coursework utilising the knowledge acquired from the examined unit in order to present a business pitch to a panel of experts and then evaluating the business idea and their performance in the pitch.

Year 11 Topics
Year 12 Overview
The course is split into two units. Unit 1 is externally assessed; Unit 5 is internally assessed. Where time permits, we start another external unit, Unit 17. Students will also have the opportunity to resist Unit 1 in the Summer exam session.
Year 13 Overview
The course is split into three units. Unit 2 is externally assessed in January and Unit 4 is internally assessed. If necessary students will complete Unit 17 although this should be done in the summer term of Year 12. Students will also have the opportunity to resit and complete externally assessed units in the Summer exam session.