Budget 2017 - Micro and Macro effects

Following on from Jonny's blog with a great Budget starter activity, here's one for those Year 13 students who are preparing for the Synoptic paper - with thanks to my colleagues who have contributed to this.

Give the students a print out of the key measures of the Budget - those from the BBC or the FT are ideal.

Divide the group into pairs or small groups, and allocate 3 or 4 of the key Budget measures to each group. They should make two lists, one of the microeconomic and one of the macroeconomic effects of each of their measures. They should then either rotate to another set of measures and repeat the exercise, or meet with another small group and share their lists of effects.

After three or four rounds of this, ask the whole group to discuss what they consider to be the most significant (and, perhaps, least significant) of the micro and macro effects, explaining the full cause and effect with a chain of analysis, and justifying their choices. At the end of the lesson, ask the class to vote on which measures they would choose to write about - perhaps two micro and two macro that they could analyse, using theory from their syllabus that they can use with confidence.

Then follow up with a homework essay in which they have to evaluate the microeconomic and macroeconomic effects of the UK government's 2017 Budget. Ideally, they should evaluate it against the objectives that the Chancellor set at the start of his speech, as follows:

"As we prepare for our future outside the EU, we ... must focus relentlessly on keeping Britain at the cutting edge of the global economy. The deficit is down, but debt is still too high.

Employment is up, but productivity remains stubbornly low.

Too many of our young people are leaving formal education without the skills they need for today’s labour market.

And too many families are still feeling the squeeze, almost a decade after the crash.

So our job is not done.

And our task today is to take the next steps in preparing Britain for a global future.

To equip our young people with the skills they need.

To support our public services.

And to help ordinary working families as we build an economy that works for everyone."