Syllabus Title: A' Level Business
Examination Board: WJEC (Eduqas)
Assessment Outline: Assessment is 100% exam based (there is no coursework)
Year 1: Year 12
Component 1 – Business Opportunities and Functions
For this side of the syllabus you will look at what businesses are all about. How managers/leaders improve performance by effective decision making. You will consider enterprise; developing business plans; market research and other marketing techniques; business location; raising finance; using breakeven analysis; cash-flow forecasting and setting budgets and human resources.
You will also consider that once a business is established, how you could improve the business in order to sustain it for the future. Therefore, you will look at:
- Improving financial performance; improving operational performance and improving marketing and human resources performance.
The exam is a written exam and has three sections in total and is worth 33.3% of the A ‘Level. The exam is based on two sections - Section A, has some small mark questions, some calculations all based on a business scenario; Section B, has mostly longer questions; the highest being 12 marks. The exam is 2 hours – 15 mins and is 80 marks.
Year 2: Year 13
This section of the course is suitably challenging for students and will cover topics not taught in year 1 or at GCSE so makes it far more interesting for the student. The topics covered are corporate social responsibility, forecasting future trends, impact of technology, environmental factors, analysing financial performance managing change, culture, economic environment, decision making and external factors. there are also a variety of business models to get your head around such as; Porters Five Forces, Ansoff's and Lewin's Three-Step Model of Change to name but a few.
Component 2 - Business Analysis and Strategy
The exam is a written exam and is mainly based on data response questions under a given business scenario. This component is worth 33.3 of the overall A' Level. The exam is 2 hours - 15 mins and is 80 marks.
Component 3 - Business in the Changing World
The exam is written and is mainly based on TWO sections - Section A is a case study usually of a well-known business and students have to answer a series of questions and apply to the case study material. Section B is where the students get a choice of answering one set of questions out of three given options. Each question has a part a) worth 10 marks and a part b) worth 20 marks. This component is worth 33.3% of the overall A' Level and the exam is 2 hours and 15 mins and worth 80 marks.
Extra-Curricular we offer the students to take part in National competition such as; Tycoon in Schools, Student Investor Challenge and BASE Challenge. We will also be running a trip to New York in Easter, 2020