Government and the Economy lesson plan

This lesson plan and associated resources, which are produced by the Citizenship Foundation, explain the credit crunch and also the Chancellor’s annual Budget. They are a great way to introduce students starting on AQA unit 4 to the thankless task that a Chancellor of the Exchequer has in trying to decide the best way to raise tax revenue and cut spending.

Start the discussion off with the graphic illustration provided by the UK Debt Bombshell, then go to this excellent YouTube clip which helps explain teh Credit Crunch and why we got into this position. You can give students the chance to guess which taxes raise the most revenue and which departments spend most - do a bit of copying and cutting of pages 8, 9 and 11 of the resources - before giving them the pie charts on page 7. After examining this, they should be ready to work through Activities 2 and 3 in the Government and Economy lesson plan. The Citizenship Foundation also provide some Teachers’ Notes.

Having worked through this at the end of last week, my students decided that no-one should be allowed to vote until they have undertaken an exercise like this!