Pedants corner - the first textbook for new GCSE Business

The first textbook for the new GCSE Business specifcations has just been published. MY copy from Amazon arrived with a thud on the desk this morning! I thought I’d put it through a quick test to see if I could spot a fundamental error within five minutes…

Initially I was a bit put off. I thought I’d ordered a textbook. What was in front of me looks more like a comic. A very similar design style to the reading books my kids bring home from primary school each day. Still, if the prevailing wisdom is to dumb everything down (including the content), then it will probably prove a winner!

On with the test.

The best place to look is always in the finance section. People who write business studies textbooks for a living often have little, if any, experience of real world business. They are prone to regurgitate what other textbooks have written before them, perhaps dumbing the previous version down a bit to suit the new approach

So was there anything wrong?

I spotted a couple of things which we could debate.

First, no mention of the most common source of finance for a startup or small business. Survey after survey shows that the humble credit card is the most common source of finance for SMEs. No mention.

No mention either of the Credit Crunch. Still, the book was written in late 2008. So students can move forward comforted by the thought that a new business can simply apply for a bank loan or overdraft - no problem at all!

But then I found something that I couldn’t really let go. This statement:

“Small businesses will not have shareholders, and while they may have the option to become a private limited company, raising money via a stock exchange issue is not a route that is open to them” [page 93]

followed by the section summary:

“issuing shares is not an option for the small business” [page 95]

Complete tosh. Just look at those two statements again - yes, they really are in a new GCSE Business textbook:

“Small businesses will not have shareholders”
““issuing shares is not an option for the small business”

Tell that to the tens of thousands of newly incorporated businesses setup in the UK each year. Explain that to the numerous startups or small businesses who take investment from friends and family, or business angels.

I know its easy to be pedantic. Ok - I’m having a cheap shot. But really, how can someone possibly write that?

It gets worse when I follow the reference to an earlier paragraph describing why a new business might want to raise finance by selling shares! Not only does this contradict what has been written about sources of finance, but it goes onto to state:

“A small business will always remain small unless the owner can raise capital to expand”

...so using retained profits, or using debt are irrelevant if the small business wants to expand? Apparently so.

I’m wondering why this has been printed, and a thought crosses my mind. I appreciate this is a little controversial and you can quite rightly accuse me of being a “pot calling the kettle black”. But here it is.

The textbook authors are so concerned to write in a way that is inclusive for students of all abilities, that they are taking the dumbing-down way too far.

Some topics in business are complex - like raising finance. To be explained properly, the right terminology is important and it requires more than a little detail. Writing in this simplistic way increases the risk that fundamental errors creep into the text. For example, the textbook is fully of the use of “always”, “never” - when we know that real business is messy - it is a question of “sometimes”, “might” or “could”.

Hey ho. I have had my rant! I feel better for it. There are some more howlers in the marketing section - but I’ll leave you to find those. Let’s hope we can avoid making too many similar errors with our new resources for the GCSE Business specs!