Edexcel GCSE Business (2017)
Developing enterprising minds
Here, you'll find everything you need to prepare for GCSE Business from 2017 (first assessment 2019), including our accredited specification and sample assessment materials.
Our approach
We’ve worked with the teaching community, higher education and subject associations to design our new qualification for 2017. Our ambition has been to develop a business qualification that you will know and recognise, but updated in line with the subject content changes and in response to your feedback.
We’ve retained the structure of our current specification to give you as much continuity as possible, starting the course with an exploration of how and why businesses start and moving through to the issues and decisions businesses make as they grow.
Based on your feedback, we’ve also taken the opportunity to make some improvements to the clarity and structure of our new specification and exam papers to make sure you're clear about the new teaching and assessment requirements from your first glance.
We know you use contemporary contexts in your teaching and our new specification will enable you to continue to bring practical and engaging case studies into the classroom. We also know that real and relevant businesses examples engage your students, so you’ll continue to see these in our assessments.
Our new papers will build confidence through ramped questions which increasingly challenge students as they move through the paper. Our straightforward mark schemes make the expectations clear to teachers and students.
To help you implement the new specification with confidence, we’ll provide detailed content and assessment guidance as well as course planners, case studies and guides to how to include investigative tasks within the teaching and learning.
On this page
Specification
- Qualification type:
- General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE)
- Level:
- Level 1/2
- Accreditation status:
- Accredited
- Subject:
- Business
- Specification codes:
- 1BS0
- Availability:
- UK and international
- First teaching:
- 2017
- First assessment:
- 2019
GCSE Business (9-1) 2017: What's changing
These changes will apply to all awarding organisations’ specifications:
The changes to assessment have not yet finalised by Ofqual. The proposed changes are:
- Removal of controlled assessment; GCSEs in Business will now be assessed entirely by exam
- Introduction of quantitative skills (calculation and interpretation) with a minimum of 10% of the subject marks to be allocated to these skills
The subject content published by the DfE represents 100% core content for all GCSEs in Business. Changes are:
- Increased breadth and depth with new content to cover:
- e-commerce and digital communication
- the sales process and the importance to businesses of providing good customer service, including product knowledge, customer engagement and post sales service
- the role of procurement and the impact of logistical and supply decisions on businesses
- gross and net profit ratios, break even and average rate of return
- Increased depth:
- through application to business contexts (small to large businesses operating in local, national and global markets)
- through business decision making
- Increased emphasis on the interrelated nature of business activity
- The economic environment is included but there is minimal overlap with economics subject content
Free Getting Ready To Teach events
Our free Getting Ready to Teach events will support you in delivering our new Edexcel GCSE (9-1) Business specification for first teaching from September 2017.
Book your free Getting Ready to Teach place
If you don’t have an Edexcel Online account, you can book by emailing us at trainingbookings@pearson.com.
This presentation was last updated on 14th November 2016. You can download the slides or listen to the presentation below.
Support for
Teaching
We'll provide support for you to plan and deliver the new GCSE in Business. Whatever guidance you're looking for, we're here to help.
We're now running free launch events to walk you through the changes to our new Business qualification.
