Business & Economics

Highlights of 2010 Results

The current Business Studies grades are the best ever seen in QK, with the department now teaching more students than ever across Key Stages 4&5. Particular areas of achievement were:

• BTEC First Certificate in Business - 100% pass rate in all years. One third of BTEC students achieved an A*/A or B grade!
• A Level Business Studies - 100% students either achieved their predicted grade or higher, for the third year running! 65% of students exceeded their predicted grades!
• Very strong A Level Economics grades with our highest ever numbers of A and B grades.
• BTEC National Diploma in Business - In total 75% of students exceeded their predicted grades. 100% Passed!

Current Developments

The Business Career Academy is going from strength to strength. The 2009/10 cohort achieved the highest Business A level results ever with three A grades and nine B grades. We strongly believe that this is in part due to the motivational benefit of the Academy membership. The Academy Advisory Board has now been officially and formally established should guide future expansion of this project. Students really take pride in being part of this excellent group of future business leaders.

In terms of staff changes Mr de Garis has been appointed Head of Department. To cope with continued expansion Mr Holder has been recruited from Maths to lend his expertise to A Level Economics and we are pleased to welcome Miss Smith who will use her industry experience to great effect across KS4&5.

The new Business and Economics GCSE course has had its first set of impressive Year 10 results, with a huge number of outstanding A & B grades. We look forward to building on this initial success going forward into the full course GCSE.

Beyond QK

We continue to increase our contact with the business world and despite the tough economic conditions have been able to conduct a range of workshops and visits to an increasingly broad range of organisations. As ever, we have our paid summer internship program with Career Academies UK which is supported by the "Partners in Business" program and the "QK Guru Lecture" series with 8 Business speakers giving lectures and workshops throughout the academic year. Highlights this year have been the 2009 Paris Residential to Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer (the world's 5th largest law firm) and the Head of the Financial Services Authority; Mr Hector Sants speaking to our Economics Students.

Our year 11 stretch program will be headed up by Mr Castro who will be rewarding our most gifted and hardworking GCSE students with a series of Brokerage City-link workshops in firms such as UBS.

We continue to expand and innovate our pastoral support including a new Economics A Level Mentoring Program with Boston Consultancy Group in Year 12, combined with a university applications and internship outreach and support program targeting our high achievers in Year 13.

Given this sort of exposure it is little wonder that the Business and Economics department was enthusiastically described as "cutting edge" in our 2009 local authority visit!