Subject Intent
This course gives students a real view into the world of working within any given business. You are given regular briefings and deadlines to produce work in as close to an office environment as the school can offer. Students are given first-hand experience of writing reports, analysing financial records and making recommendations as well as conducting live market research.
Tenacity plays a vital role in this course in order to meet multiple deadlines and juggle multiple tasks. Students also need to demonstrate aspiration, as the standard expected in the writing of reports is professional.
Students will be exposed to more traditional lessons as part of the examined units. For this they will complete tasks in lesson and be set a range of consolidation tasks and exam questions to complete in their own time.
Staffing
Tom Williamson - Lead teacher of Business Studies
T.Williamson@derbycathedralschool.org.uk
Homework and Assessment
The approach to homework on this course is fluid. Lots of your homework tasks will be to complete reports for a given deadline. Each report will carry a grade and will be assessed in real time on completion. Each of these grades then makes up your final grade.
There is also an examined aspect to this course. You will sit an external exam in January of Year 12, as well as January of Year 13. Mock exams will take place for these in the final weeks before the Christmas break, with feedback given before you finish the term, to allow this to be the focus of your revision.
Independent Study and Revision
All support documents are available on MS teams. These relate explicitly to the report you are currently working on, future reports are also available should you wish to get ahead. During your independent study time, you will be expected to work on completion of reports and revision activities in the run up to your terminal exams.
Subject Enrichment
There will be opportunities across the course to work on a number of start-up style businesses, which involve both promoting and making sales.
Super-curricular and Literacy
Reading around the subject of Business will allow a deeper understanding of all aspects covered across the two-year course. By keeping up to date with business events in the news, it will allow constant application to topics you are learning.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business/companies
Should you wish to take your experience from this course into starting your own business, there are thousands of TED talks covering all aspects of this. Some great examples are below.
https://www.ted.com/talks/ten_lessons_for_success_in_business
https://www.ted.com/talks/julissa_prado_3_rules_to_help_you_build_a_successful_business?language=en