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In the News21 May 2008 For many teachers, the first question will be the choice of which awarding body to follow. There are three main awarding bodies in England - AQA, Edexcel and OCR. Each will have produced a syllabus (specification) and sample materials to tempt schools and colleges to follow their courses. For them, market share is just as important as any other business. The curriculum will have been outlined by the Subject Criteria published by the regulator, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). The Criteria lay down fundamental requirements that each body must provide while allowing some leeway to provide interesting and exciting options to tempt teachers to follow their course. There are a number of changes from the existing specifications that teachers will have to take into account. The market leader for Business Studies at 'A' level is AQA. As with other awarding bodies, the new AQA Business Studies curriculum now has 4 units instead of 6. The aim is to try and reduce the examination burden on students. Some content has been trimmed and some updated to reflect changes in the business world. Most business studies curricula at 'A' level have been based on an understanding of business from a management perspective and focusing primarily on larger businesses. AQA's new specification, for example, has a greater focus on small businesses, enterprise and business start-ups, especially in Unit 1 of the specification. This will appeal to many students who look to business studies to give them an insight into the pit-falls and benefits of setting up a business. The emphasis continues to focus on smaller businesses throughout the AS course (Units 1 and 2) and covers business finance, operations management, people in business and marketing. Units 3 and 4 form the A2 part of the qualification. Here the emphasis is on larger businesses and there is a requirement to look at the content from a synoptic perspective. This means that students have to take into consideration all they have learned - including the material they will have learned at AS - when formulating their answers. The emphasis in the A2 part of the course is more on strategy and how businesses lead and cope with change. That change can, of course, come internally but will also come from external pressures such as the economy, the political and legal environment, technology and societal change. Most teachers will have to consider how to resource the new course. Will it require a wholesale purchase of new textbooks and support material or can much of what exists already in business and economics departments in schools be re-purposed? Publishers will have been busy producing new textbooks to meet the new examinations along with support materials, again, to tempt teachers and build on their market share. Two of the main concerns for teachers are time and funds. Budgets will be tight and the teacher has to decide how to spend limited resources carefully. Equally, time is a factor; with administrative tasks eating into teaching time there will be important economic decisions to make about how to maximise quality resources given the constraint of limited time. In both cases, the decision can be expressed as a typical constrained optimisation problem! Search the In the News archive:You can search the In the News section by using the form above or browse the stories using the links below. |
