Business Studies - Key Stage 4

Autumn Term

Unit 1: Business activity
Students get to discuss the entrepreneurial skills and characteristics needed to start your own business. They investigate the different types of ownership and liability involved, relating to risk. We map out the different stakeholder groups and apply this initially to the score so students are aware everybody who has an interest in a business is activities.

In total for unit 1 there will be six topics that are thoroughly investigated over the course of the autumn term.

Unit 2: Marketing
Marketing topics for instance segmentation and market research as well as the 4 P’s; price place product promotion are taught later in the autumn term where we look at how and why businesses choose their customers, what advertising methods they use, what communication they use and how products are designed and marketed.

Spring Term

Unit 2: Marketing

We finish off marketing by looking at how pricing strategies affect their sales, revenue and profitability.

In Unit 3 students get to investigate the recruitment process and learn far more than hiring and firing of staff.

Unit 3: People
Students begin their journey understanding how roles and jobs change over time, how to apply for jobs, the importance of motivating and training staff to improve retention and maintain productivity.

Summer Term

Unit 3: People
Students start reflecting on their own career paths and what they aspire to do in their future. They take on role play and actively discuss discrimination and the law.

Unit 4: Operations
By the end of year 10 students would have learned about the functional areas marketing and people and we now move on to Unit 4 which is operations another functional area. We look at the operating space of businesses, often this is based In a factory setting and learn about job, batch and flow production as well as the importance of quality.

Unit 7: The independent nature of business
Unit 7 – Students throughout the course will build up an understanding  of how the functional areas taught over the year, link together and impact the business.

Autumn Term

Unit 4: Operations
There is a recap of the 2 topics covered in years 10. Students continue to learn about suppliers, customer service and consumer law.

Examples are not only in a manufacturing sector more so in retail and students are encouraged to describe their own experiences to enhance their learning. Discussions on the sales environment being via e-commerce or face-to-face. The importance of product knowledge and The emergence of new departments for instance social media monitoring online complaints monitoring and e-marketing.

Unit 5: Finance
Financial terms are originally taught at the start of the course for instance understanding of capital, revenue, expenses and profit, at this stage in the course now that three functional areas have been taught the financial elements can be applied for instance capital needed setting it up a new factory or shop and the sources of finance involved. Students learn to interpret the differences with profit loss and break even as well as create charts and calculate Break Even forecasts.

Spring Term

Unit 5: Finance
Continue looking at financial methods in order to help decision-making and this includes clash flow forecast and difficult topics such as average rate of return and their impact on businesses.

Unit 6: Influences on businesses
Towards the end of the course unit six covers many topics that are taught across the curriculum such as PSHEE and citizenship; ethics and the environment are crucial factors in today’s business strategies and these are areas that are discussed and investigated as part of our curriculum. Globalisation and the changes in the Economic environment are also part of unit 6 and help students understand the importance of interest rates and consumer spending and the impact of spreading the risk by creating a global brand.

Unit 7: The independent nature of business
Students throughout the course will build up an understanding  of how the functional areas taught over the year, link together and impact the business. 

Summer Term

Revision and preparation for examinations.

We revisit Chapter 7 as mentioned previously. It’s very much about linking the functional areas of business and how they are interdependent on each other and affect each other on a daily basis.