The New International A level Business
The new (2018) International A level in Business has retained the four unit structure of the 2013 specification. There are some amendments to each unit and there is a greater emphasis on quantitative skills.
Please note that IAL qualifications are not available in the UK.
Specification content
Unit 1 focuses on marketing and people. The topics on market research, markets and entrepreneurs are similar to the old specification. The Marketing and Managing People topics have been moved from the old Unit 2 to the new Unit 1.
Unit 2 retains the operations and finance topics from the old Unit 2 and gains from the old Unit 1 sources of finance, break-even, profit, cash flow and the external environment.
Unit 3 has changed very little. Quantitative sales forecasting has been added to the decision-making techniques and there is a new section on managing change.
Unit 4 still focuses on global businesses and is very similar to the old Unit 4.
The specification and the Getting Started Guide provide more details about the specification content.
Assessment
The Unit 1 and 2 exams are both 2 hours long and have the same structure:
- Section A: Short- and extended-response questions based on sources (30 marks)
- Section B: Same format as Section A, based on different sources (30 marks)
- Section C: One 20-mark essay question, based on one or more sources (20 marks).
The Unit 3 and 4 exams are 2 hours long and have the same structure:
- Section A: Short and extended-response questions, based on sources (40 marks)
- Section B: One 20-mark essay question, based on one or more sources (20 marks)
- Section C: One 20-mark essay question, based on one or more sources (20 marks).
The Sample Assessment Materials illustrate how the exam papers have been designed.
Transition
The final resit of the legacy AS examinations is June 2019.
There will be no legacy examinations in the January 2020 series. This is to allow students who sat A2 examinations in October 2019 time to receive their results and make a decision on whether to retake any unit examinations for the last time in June 2020.
The new specification has different content and assessment to the 2013 legacy specification, therefore it will not be possible to combine results from any previous examinations.
Detailed information can be found in the transition table below.
Published resources
The IAS Student Book and Teacher Resource Pack are available now.
The IAL book (units 3 and 4) is due to be published in March 2019. The Teacher Resource Pack will be available in June 2019.
