A slice of the action
The Guardian on Friday featured an independent report on the sandwich market served as a “Get up and go” supplement to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the humble sandwich and the start of British Sandwich Week. It would make useful stimulus material for a low-budget research activity for a BUSS1 start-up.
read more...»AQA AS Business (BUSS1) - Key Term Glossary
Listed below are 50 key terms that AQA BUSS1 students need to ensure they understand and can define / explain in the exam.
read more...»BUSS1 - Some Topic Thoughts for May 2012
Our BUSS1 topic tracker outlines how the BUSS1 specification has been covered so far in the real exam papers. May 2012 will be the 8th sitting of BUSS1 and you can see from the topic tracker that some core topics have been examined regularly. However, there are other topics which are yet to appear in the paper and it is worth making double-sure that these are addressed in the final stages of revision…
read more...»AQA AS Business BUSS1 Online Revision Clinic - Thursday May10 2012
Students sitting AQA AS Business Studies unit BUSS1 may find this helpful. We’re running an online revision clinic for an hour on Thursday 10 May from 8.00 - 9.30 p.m. Graham Prior and I will be there, together with some other members of the tutor2u team to provide support for students as they prepare for the BUSS1 exam.
The online revision clinic is free and will appear here - on this blog entry. You will need to login using your Facebook, Twitter or OpenID account in order to participate (e.g. ask questions and/or comment)
read more...»AQA AS Business (BUSS1) - Exam Topic Tracker
Now updated to include January 2012 BUSS1 exam paper
This might be helpful for students getting ready for BUSS1 in May 2012. As each exam sitting of a new specification passes, it is a useful exercise to track which parts of the specification have been tested and in what way. Of course some topics soon become examiner favourites - tested again and again if students consistently perform poorly. So beware question-spotting…
The questions set in all the official sittings of AQA AS Business Studies (BUSS1) are summarised in our BUSS1 Topic Tracker, which you can download here:
Download AQA AS Business Studies (BUSS1) Topic Tracker
You will also find a wide range of supporting revision materials for BUSS1 from the links provided further below…
AQA AS Business (BUSS1) - The Basics for Revision
This short, simple revision presentation contains some summary thoughts about potential application, analysis and evaluation points which students might use effectively in their BUSS1 exam answers. The critical thing to remember is that all answers to BUSS1 questions need to be in context - refer to the story and circumstances of the startup business in particular.
read more...»Revision Workshop Dates for AQA BUSS1 and BUSS3 in Winter 2012
The proposed dates and venues for our highly popular one-day revision workshops for AQA A Level Business Studies - BUSS1 and BUSS3 are now available. They are as follows:
Monday 26/11/12 Portsmouth Bus (BUSS1, BUSS3) - Vue Cinema Gunwharf Quays
Tuesday 27/11/12 Fulham (BUSS1, BUSS3) Vue Cinema Fulham Broadway
Friday 30/11/12 Stratford (BUSS1, BUSS3) Vue Cinema Westfield Stratford City
Monday 3/12/12 Bristol Bus (BUSS1, BUSS3) Vue Cinema Cribbs Causeway
Tuesday 4/12/12 Birmingham Bus (BUSS1, BUSS3) Vue Cinema Star City
Wednesday 5/12/12 Manchester Bus (BUSS1, BUSS3) Vue Cinema Lowry Salford Quays
Monday 10/12 Newcastle Bus (BUSS1, BUSS3) Odeon Cinema, Metro Centre
Tuesday 11/12 Leeds Bus (BUSS1, BUSS3) Vue Cinema The Light
We’ve kept the student price for each workshop at £20 (+VAT) for the seventh year running. Teacher places remain free, although please note that individual teachers may not attend on their own; the free teacher place arrangement is designed to support colleagues bringing student groups.
The booking form is now available here:
https://tutor2u.wufoo.com/forms/aqa-buss1-buss3-revision-workshops-winter-2012/
Important notice: Please only make provisional bookings if you genuinely intend, and have school/college permission, to bring students to the revision workshops. Schools and colleges that persistently cancel their provisional bookings close to the workshop dates will only be permitted to make confirmed bookings if there are spaces available.
Spotting a Business Opportunity - Eastenders and Coronation Street
Whilst watching Eastenders last night, this belting activity just popped into my head. I think its perfect for the first unit of most GCSE courses but could also be used for BUSS1. A while away I know but I thought I would blog it before I forget.
read more...»AQA BUSS1 Pierre’s Personalised T-Shirts - Observations & Suggested Answers
Many thanks to colleagues who faxed over yesterday’s paper. Here are a few thoughts on potential approaches & answers for the January 2012 BUSS1 paper.
Don’t forget that this paper was a last-minute replacement paper (note the BUSS1R code on the front cover) after AQA withdrew the original paper. Was it a rush job? Not sure. If asked to rush a BUSS1 paper out, you’d probably want to keep it pretty simple and focus on the basics (market research, profit, breakeven and cash flow etc).!
I’m pleased that we nailed breakeven at the BUSS1 workshop and encouraged students to expect a lot more use of the results of calculations in other questions too. That change in the BUSS1 paper approach is now well established and some centres may need to refocus their SOW to spend more time practising profit and breakeven calculations from a variety of angles. The AQA examiners are now encouraging students to access good application (which leads to good analysis) through the use of calculations - an encouraging development, but one students will need more support on, I suspect.
The overall balance of the paper? Perhaps over-weighted towards breakeven and profit calculations, with a further emphasis on cash flow/sources of finance. But isn’t that what setting up a simple trading business like personalised t-shirts is all about? Many candidates might have been confused by question 2(c) which seemed to suggest more complicated calculations than were actually required.
Anyway, here are a few suggestions on possible responses to each question in the paper:
read more...»AQA AS Business (BUSS1) Opportunities for Evaluation
In the list below I have highlighted a series of topic areas in BUSS1 which provide good opportunities for students to build effective evaluation into their answers. Students should remember that, in all cases, the evaluation must be made in the context of the case study business, not simply generic.
read more...»AQA AS Business (BUSS1) - Key Topic Revision Checklist
Here is a key topic revision checklist which students preparing for BUSS1 might find helpful to check they have covered the key topics before the exam:
AQA AS Business (BUSS1) - Resources Overview & Links
tutor2u is the UK’s leading publisher of resources for AQA AS Business (BUSS1). There are now thousands of free resources available on the tutor2u website suitable for AQA BUSS1 and we publish a full programme of teaching materials, revision days and CPD training. This blog page is the master listing for our BUSS1 provision, with key links to materials of interest to AQA GCE Business centres. Please bookmark this URL - new resources will be added to this page as they are made available
read more...»BUSS1 Key Revision Terms Quiz
Here is a fifteen question revision quiz covering some key terms for the BUSS1 exam. For each question type in the correct answer - each question shows the number of letters required in the correct term! Good luck!
read more...»AQA AS Business (BUSS1) Revision Guide
I’m pleased to announce the publication of a new tutor2u revision guide for AQA BUSS1. This 20 page booklet guides students through all the key BUSS1 topics and also showcases ways in which an A* BUSS1 answer can be built on good analysis and evaluation. The BUSS1 Revision Guide is being provided free of charge to all students who are attending the BUSS1 revision workshops in Portsmouth, Hull, London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle & Leeds. For students who are not able to attend the workshops, the Revision Guide can now be purchased for £5 per copy (including P&P) from our online store.
Some illustrations from the new BUSS1 Revision Guide are provided below:
read more...»BUSS1 Workshop 2011 Topics - What We’ll Cover
The workshop materials are now ready and our team of 15 BUSS1 presenters is now flat-out preparing to deliver the AQA BUSS1 revision workshops later this month and in early December.
The day is wholly focused on helping your students maximise their performance in BUSS1. No guest business speakers; no waffle; just key exam content and a relentless focus on exam technique. Our aim is simple - to help your students get as far up the AQA mark scheme levels as possible.
read more...»Revision Quiz - Market Research for a Business Startup
This new revision quiz looks at how a startup can undertake market research. There are over 20 questions in the quiz bank for this topic and each time you run the quiz 10 questions are selected at random.
Launch Revision Quiz - Market Research for a Business Startup
Revision Quiz - Locating the Startup Business
What factors should a startup business consider when choosing its business location? This question is addressed in this 10-question revision quiz on business location:
Launch revision quiz on Locating the Startup Business
BUSS1 Beat the Teacher - the Thinking Skills Lesson Resource for AQA BUSS1
BUSS1 Beat The Teacher is a great way to help test whether students have picked up a thorough understanding of core topics on their AS course so far.
Beat the Teacher is a thinking skills activity which involves giving students a page of written text and/ or calculations which contain a number of errors. Students then work individually or in pairs to try and ascertain where the mistakes are.
read more...»The breakeven simulator
One from the archives here which might be of interest to colleagues - particularly those new to tutor2u. This is an interactive breakeven simulator, with supporting notes and student activities..
read more...»Revision Presentation - Adding Value
This revision presentation examines the concept of adding value - the ways in which a business can achieve revenues that are higher than the cost of the inputs into the production or operations process.
read more...»Entrepreneurs and Calculated Risks
Over the summer I have been re-reading the new Smarta Business book which is packed full of practical, real-life advice on starting a business from 100 top entrepreneurs.
I came across a whole section on a topic which we were discussing with students at our revision workshops recently - the need for entrepreneurs to take “calculated risks”. The term calculated risk actually appears in the excellent Edexcel GCSE Business (Unit 1), but students don’t all find it easy to understand what it means.
read more...»AQA AS Business (BUSS1) - Specification Resource Map
[updated 25 August 2011]
tutor2u’s Business Studies blog contains several thousand resources suitable for the AQA BUSS1 unit (planning & financing a business) and new resources are added frequently. To make things a little easier to find, we’ve produced “specification resource map” which maps the AQA BUSS1 spec against relevant tagged content on the tutor2u Business Studies blog. This is provided using a hyper-linked pdf file which is automatically updated every time we add a new resource. All you need to keep is the pdf resource map and click on a relevant link.
Download the AQA BUSS1 Specification Resource Map here:
Adding value - turning waste into gold
Good quality potatoes make great potato chips or crisps. But what do you with the smaller or mis-shapen potatoes which fail the raw material quality test for a premium crisp brand? Simple, you use them to create a premium brand of vodka…
read more...»New to AQA AS/A2 Business Studies - the CPD Course for 2011/12
Thursday 22 September - Central London
New to AQA AS/A2 Business Studies is a resource-packed CPD course which will provide a huge boost for colleagues and departments wanting to deliver the UK’s most popular A Level Business Studies specification.
read more...»AQA BUSS1 & BUSS3 Revision Workshops Winter 2011
The confirmed dates and venues for our popular AQA BUSS1 and BUSS3 revision workshops are provided below. These dates broadly mirror the same timing for the sell-out workshops last year, with the additions of Portsmouth (Gunwharf Quays) & Hull (Princess Quay) as new locations. Please make your provisional bookings as soon as possible - Portsmouth is already close to being fully booked!
read more...»Recession? Hair today, gone tomorrow
As we enter a period dominated by “cuts”, here is a profile of an industry which thrives on cuts. Some great business lesson material here on market segmentation, adding value and the nature of demand for a product.
read more...»Sources of finance - the attraction of franchises
In general, Banks don’t like to lend to business start-ups. The risks are high and the returns uncertain. However, there is one kind of “start-up” which the UK banks are often happy to finance - franchises - and this is illustrated with the launch of a new £100million franchise finance fund by RBS & NatWest. Details of the new finance fund are provided here on Smarta. The claimed benefits of franchisees which apply to the fund include:
- Loans of up to 70% for new franchise businesses (percentage of the total finance requirement)
- Two years free banking for new franchises
- Reduced fee of 1% (the loan arrangement fee charged by the bank)
- Up to 12 months of capital repayment holidays (i.e. start paying back the loan later - perhaps when the franchise is better established)
- Loans for existing franchise businesses (e.g. refinance to move away from the existing banker!)
- Access to an unlimited expertise from the dedicated RBS/NatWest franchise team
Why do banks like lending to franchises? The answer lies in the lower perceived risk of a well-established franchise. Over the years, the banks have gained a great deal of experience in working with franchisees. They understand the likely financial profile (revenues, costs and cash flows) of a Subway, Dominos or Green Thumbs franchise.
AQA BUSS1 Jan 2011 - Tom’s Salon Calculations
The calculations required of students taking the AQA BUSS1 paper in Jan 2011 are shown below:
read more...»Insights from an Entrepreneur - Kirsty Henshaw (Worthenshaws)
This fantastic Smarta interview features Kirsty Henshaw, one of the entrepreneurial stars of 2010, who wowed the Dragons with her frozen desert Worthenshaws Freedom. Kirsty is joining us at the Business Teacher National Conference 2011 on Thursday 30 June and it will be lovely to hear how her business has developed since this interview. Kirsty’s story is perfect as a case study for all business spec units covering the essentials of enterprise and entrepreneurship.
read more...»Innovation and ideas - what makes a successful business concept?
This excellent video interview from Smarta focuses on the key topics of innovation, creativity and developing a viable business idea.
read more...»
