Mr Marcus McGowan MSc PgDip BA (Hons)

This Business Education Learning Blog is aimed primarily at Higher Business Management students/teachers and ICT students/teachers.

The aim of this blog is to provide you with interesting articles, news, trivia as well as resources or links to materials which will help in your course of study.

I am a Teacher of Business Education and I have written for Education Scotland and BBC Bitesize.

If you'd like to contact me please click on the link to: email me

Saturday, 11 October 2008

A Curriculum for Excellence

We have been looking once more at unpacking the Technologies outcomes in our school. It was a different process from the SBEA meeting earlier this year!
I think there is an opportunity for Business subjects to gain a larger foothold into S1 and S2 (yes I know it is for S1-S3) BUT at present very, very few schools teach Business subjects to S1 and S2. We are lumped into the generic umbrella of ICT or IT.

I think that there could be units that relate specifically to Business: Personal Finance (with the current credit crunch should our kids be more financially literate than the generations that have left schools over the past 20 years or so?), Marketing (pupils may end up with jobs in this creative discipline and they get the chance to look at product design, market research - perhaps desiging their own questionnaires that can be actually acted upon? - PR and advertsing) Enterprise - I would be all for teaching Enterprise as a discreet subject and I know some high achieving schools do offer this in S5/6 (because I taught in them!!!) and again pupils could form their own company and actually create and sell their products rather than having to wait for Young Enterprise in S5/6. Indeed some of the target group of pupils will have left school by the time Senior school comes along.

One gripe I do have with aCfE (why is education in love with acronyms?) is that the focus seems very much on Scotland. Now I am as Scottish as the next man, but I much prefer the idea of us all being Global Citizens and not being insular. My pupils and indeed myself are more interested in the practices and affairs of what is going on as Captain James T. Kirk would say: "Out there".
That means talking and researching MNCs; wondering if Hugo Chavez (the President of Venezuela) is right to nationalise many of his countries organisations; looking at the Tiger Economies and the incredible rise in productivity in nations such as China, India, Thailand and Malaysia; we're all still trying to work out the complex way the price of oil is calculated!, discussing the implications of California becoming independent and automatically assuming the mantle of the World's 8th Richest economy; looking in awe at Japanese marketing as they generate many products and let them sink or swim SANS (a little bit of culture there) market research; and on the subject of culture... the way people do business around the world is much more interesting than banging on for 20 mins about videoconferencing.

I love my subject and I just hope enough bigwigs who have influence realise that Business Education or Business Studies as it is still called in some places love it too. It is a vitally important range of subjects that are actually MORE relevant than many others because EVERYTHING we do, see, read or hear in the news and TV can be related to our subjects.

If we are serious about creating the conditions for first class students and future employees to emerge from the school gates, then MORE Business subjects are required.

1 comment:

chris sivewright said...

I agree with the gist of the post about more 'business subjects' but the overlords have done the subject no favours by allowing the standards to fall so far that it is now possible to get the whole A level (As and A2) after just a few hours of tuition.

Business Studies is now seen as a soft option and, if truth be told, any and all students who have, say GCSE Maths and English grade B and above plus an interest in Business, should be able to get the entire A level after say, 5 weeks.

If the subject was made a lot harder then status might just follow.

A few years ago for Cambridge A level you had to do:

4000 word coursework PLUS oral
Essay paper
Compulsory quantitative analysis questions
Compulsory accounting questions
A three hour case study

Now THAT was difficult and worth something.

What happened?

Some pupils failed, changed boards to AEB (Anyone's Easiest Board) and scored a grade A.

Easy stuff.

Now it's just a case of buying the textbook written by the Chief Examiner, the teacher trots off to the Conference, the kids go to the student revision conference (lecturer: Chief Examiner) and all the little clones pass.

Like I said, barely a few weeks work.

If by any chance you disbelive, read the press cuttings:

http://www.osl-ltd.co.uk/press2.asp

Followers

Visitors by City

FEEDJIT Live Traffic Feed

Labels