Business: Key Stage 4

Enterprising minds of the future, through application of business theory and current business practices.  

Business is a social science that studies how businesses operate. Students learn about the different areas of a business, including:

• The purpose of business activity, the role of entrepreneurship, and the dynamic nature of business
• Marketing and how businesses find out what customers want
• Business operations and how businesses make things, provide customer service, and keep costs under control
• How businesses recruit, motivate, and train staff
• How businesses make financial decisions
• How technology, ethics, and environmental considerations impact businesses

Students also learn how to apply their knowledge to different business contexts, including small enterprises, large multinationals, and businesses operating locally, nationally, and globally. Examples include fast food giants such as KFC and car manufacturers such as BMW and Tesla. Entrepreneurs including Elon Musk and Ben Francis, who founded Gymshark, which is now worth over a billion dollars, are researched by students to develop their business understanding. Entrepreneurship and setting up new business ventures are large parts of the course. 

GCSE Business Studies helps students develop transferable skills, such as decision making, creativity, problem solving, data analysis, and teamwork. You will learn these skills in other subjects, like Geography or IT, but Business brings a real world application to these topics.

The Business course is well resourced, with excellent textbooks, online video lectures, and several detailed educational websites that follow the Edexcel Specification. Students are provided with textbooks, but you might want to explore the revision guides and flash cards that are also available.  

  Popular flash cards from Tutor2U.

Students of Business will make presentations, debate important issues in the business world, keep abreast of the news, and focus on wider reading beyond the textbooks used in class. The teaching and learning is designed to allow students to explore the world of business with an inquisitive mind. Real world examples and case studies are brought into lessons, enabling students to relate theory to business activity along with inspiring them about business operations and aims. BBC documentaries such as Inside The Factory allow students to grasp the scale of business operations.