AQA Unit 6 - what the examiners said

In a lesson at the end of last week each of my year 13 students looked at the Examiners’ Reports section of the AQA website to see how their predecessors’ performance on Unit 6 papers had been judged. They took one report each and summarised the examiners’ comments into 5 key pieces of advice that could be used to improve their exam answers. There are a number of clear themes that emerged across 8 papers from 2004 to 2008, and the ‘lessons to be learnt’ that we came up with are summarised below. Note the importance of keeping up to date with the business news and keep an eye on the Business Blog – but then, any student reading this blog regularly clearly understands this already!

• Must use the case study but approach it with a ‘synoptic eye’ – good candidates show an awareness of how different aspects of business theory relate to each other

• Fewer arguments made in detail and effectively are more valuable than a large number of points made superficially – to develop points explain their impacts etc for analysis

• Use the precise words of the question in your answers – leads to higher evaluation levels – don’t drift into irrelevant topics – look for ‘cautionary’ words in the questions eg should, inevitable, always

• Knowledge needs to be precise – don’t blag!

• Analyse the data in the material rather than just reproducing it – eg calculate profit ratios or ARR, market share or growth, labour turnover etc

• Weak responses show a lack of knowledge and poor technique

• PLAN ANSWERS – they must have a structure – introduction, arguments for and against and a conclusion - use clear paragraphs – better answers have logically argued evaluations based on theory

• Presentation should be business-like with clear and concise language

• Handwriting should be legible!

• Must keep an eye on the business news – modern and ‘real’ examples are used on the Unit 6 case studies – candidates have a lack of understanding of some contemporary business issues

• Write broadly about business from your background knowledge – use the case study as a starting point – need to refer to current news reports and rumours in the press and tie these into the answers – candidates should be prepared by writing about real cases and understand the context of the questions

• BUT do not replace knowledge of the subject with knowledge of the business- use both!

• Candidates did a lot of explaining about issues but not writing about how to deal with business situations – work towards evaluation and recommendation – answers MUST come to a conclusion

• Timing needs practice – problems usually come from spending too long on early questions