AQA A2 Business (BUSS3) - Out and About plc

A wry smile on many teacher’s faces today - those whose students came to the BUSS3 Revision Workshops in Dec2009…

Back in Dec 2009 we put worked through a new BUSS3-style case study about a stuggling sports retailing chain which needed to raise finance to reposition itself as a specialist sports retailer. We looked in detail at the issues of hard and soft HRM in the context of the business changes, at the influences affecting the proposed marketing plan, and using ratio analysis to identify the most appropriate source of finance for the repositioning & expansion.

How ironic that the actual BUSS3 paper was about a struggling sports retailer that needed to raise finance in order to reposition itself in a specialist niche. The questions picked up on, amongst other areas, soft hrm, influences on marketing planning, and using ratio analysis to identify the financing options. Ok - we were lucky. Very lucky.

A mole in the tutor2u camp? Absolutely not. To make it absolutely clear - the senior AQA examiners do not put our workshop or other study & teaching materials together. Its simply not allowed. We rely on gathering suggestions from experienced AQA teachers about what they would like to see covered in the workshops, highlighting the really important parts of the specifications that need to be covered.

The BUSS3 exam today does highlight the need for students to keep an eye on relevant business stories from about 9-15 months before the BUSS3 exam. The problems faced by Blacks plc, JJB Sports (which we used for our workshop case study) and other struggling retailers were extensively described in the business press during 2008 and 2009 and provided a rich source of potential material for the BUSS3 examiner team. One of the big advantages of taking the AQA A2 units in the new specs is that the examiners are placing great emphasis on real-life business scenarios (if only OCR did the same).

There are some obvious candidate businesses and market sectors for the next sitting of BUSS3 and these would make good case studies to practice for resit candidates in June 2010 or for those attempting BUSS3 for the first time (no revision workshop this time around!).

We’ll pick up on these businesses and write about them in the Business Studies Blog over the next month or two - including providing some exam-style questions & activities. Some of them have already been heavily featured on the Business Blog!

Now our thoughts turn to BUSS2 and BUSS4. We’ve just had an all-day meeting to put the planning in place for the BUSS2 revision workshops and to line-up the team which will prepare the student and teacher support materials for the BUSS4 research task and final 40-mark essay questions. We’ve got a great team in place for those materials and the workshops, and our aim is simple - to save teachers time and to help students maximise their potential in the exams.