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Teacher guide

AQA GCSE Business revision

These activities are mapped to AQA GCSE Business 8132. Fifty-seven of them, fifteen to twenty-four minutes each, covering all six topic areas and every one of the twenty-nine sub-topics AQA lists. It is the largest set on this site, so for once the teacher's problem is choosing rather than finding. **The thing to know before you set any of it: forty-five activities contain a typed-number question, and forty-one of those tell the student which sum to do.** "Subtract 200 from 300" is a prompt that rehearses arithmetic a Year 11 can already do. Choosing the operation is the part AQA examines, and these activities mostly hand it over. That is said plainly below rather than left for you to find after setting homework.

This page lists what we actually have for AQA GCSE Business 8132. It is built from the live activities, so it is accurate on the day you read it.

The widest set on the site

Fifty-seven activities is more than any other subject and board here, and they are spread rather than stacked: all six of AQA's topic areas, and all twenty-nine sub-topics underneath them. Business in the real world, influences on business, operations, human resources, marketing and finance each have several.

That evenness is worth a sentence because it is not typical. Most subjects on this site are strongest at the start of the specification and thin out towards the end, for the dull reason that content gets built in the order the specification is written. Business happens to be finished.

The practical effect is that you can pick by topic rather than by what exists. If a class is shaky on stakeholder conflict, or on the difference between economies and diseconomies of scale, or on why a firm might choose retained profit over a bank loan, there is something for it.

What the set is actually good at

The strength runs through the reasoning topics rather than the numerical ones.

Three examples worth looking at. Stakeholder conflict puts two legitimate interests against each other and asks which one a particular business would favour, which is the AO3 move the exam wants. Choosing a finance source is built around the point that every source costs something and the question is who can afford which cost. JIT against JIC does the same for stock: holding little stock only works if the deliveries arrive.

Those are decisions rather than definitions, and a student who can make them has something the mark scheme rewards.

Where the set stops: the calculations

Business is a subject with arithmetic in it. Break-even, margin of safety, average rate of return, gross and net profit margin, cash flow: AQA examines all of them, and the skill being examined is usually knowing which calculation the situation calls for.

Forty-five of the fifty-seven activities contain a question where the student types a number. Forty-one of those forty-five prompts name the operation in words. They say "subtract the total costs from the revenue" or "divide the total cost by the number of units", and then the student does one step of arithmetic.

That is not nothing. Typing a value removes the elimination route that four options on a screen always leaves open. But it rehearses the sum, not the choice of sum, and the choice is the examined part.

Worth being precise about the comparison, because the two boards differ here and not in the direction you might expect. Our Edexcel Business set has a typed-number question in fewer of its activities, eighteen of forty-four, but only one of its twenty-six numerical prompts names the operation. AQA has more calculation coverage and less calculation demand.

If your students need the quantitative side rehearsed properly, our past paper archive carries AQA's own Business papers and mark schemes, free and unaltered, and those questions do not tell anybody what to divide by what.

Two generations of activity, and how to tell them apart

Seven of the fifty-seven run twenty minutes or longer. They were built later and to a richer standard, with more varied interactions and more application per screen: sources of finance, choosing a finance source, ethics against profit, JIT against JIC, the recruitment process, organisational structures, and tall against flat structures.

The other fifty run fifteen to eighteen minutes and share a tighter shape. They are sound for recall and for a starter. They are not the ones to reach for when a class needs a topic genuinely rebuilt.

Set the seven for intervention. Use the rest for the pass through a topic that tells you where the class actually is.

Using them

The three activities embedded further down are playable here without an account, so you can see exactly what a student sees before setting anything.

The lists below group by classroom use, worked out from what each activity contains rather than from a label somebody typed. For what the activities are and how each one is meant to be run, see ready-to-run revision activities. For students working alone between lessons, independent revision students actually keep doing is the relevant page.

To put several in front of one class in a set order, build a sprint and share one link. Everything else we have, by subject and board, is on the revision pages.

If you also teach the other board, Edexcel GCSE Business covers a specification built from two themes rather than six topic areas, with an even split of our coverage across both.

What this page does not do

It does not rehearse choosing a calculation, which is the honest limit described above and the main reason not to treat this set as complete exam preparation.

It does not rehearse an unseen case study. AQA's papers put the whole thing in a context a student has not read before. These activities build the knowledge that makes that readable.

It is not a scheme of work. For a shape to drop these into, see how to structure a GCSE revision programme.

It does not track anything, so there is no completion list to check. Your own assessment data stays the measure.

Every live Business activity for AQA

57 activities, all mapped to AQA GCSE Business (8132).

Good for starter (1)

See all 57, by topic

Try it with your class

AQA Business 22 minutes

Sources of Finance

14 steps, 9 interactive, 10 activity types.

Best used for
Independent study Mock preparation Cover lesson
  • Independent study: Explains before it asks, so a student can work alone.
  • Mock preparation: Asks students to build an answer, not just recognise one.
  • Cover lesson: Teaches and tests in one go, so a non-specialist can run it.

Try one question

A business arranges an overdraft with its bank and also sells a delivery van it no longer uses. How should each be classified?

AQA Business 24 minutes

JIT vs JIC Stock Management

14 steps, 9 interactive, 10 activity types.

Best used for
Independent study Mock preparation Cover lesson
  • Independent study: Explains before it asks, so a student can work alone.
  • Mock preparation: Asks students to build an answer, not just recognise one.
  • Cover lesson: Teaches and tests in one go, so a non-specialist can run it.

Try one question

A business talks about improving its procurement. What does that most likely mean?

AQA Business 22 minutes

The Recruitment Process

14 steps, 9 interactive, 10 activity types.

Best used for
Independent study Mock preparation Cover lesson
  • Independent study: Explains before it asks, so a student can work alone.
  • Mock preparation: Asks students to build an answer, not just recognise one.
  • Cover lesson: Teaches and tests in one go, so a non-specialist can run it.

Try one question

A business begins recruiting by carrying out job analysis. What is it doing, and why first?

Common questions

How much is here?

Fifty-seven activities, about sixteen hours if a student worked through all of them. It is the largest set on this site, and it reaches all six topic areas and every one of the twenty-nine sub-topics AQA lists.

Do the activities make students calculate?

Forty-five of the fifty-seven contain a question where the student types a number rather than picking one. But forty-one of those prompts name the operation in words, telling the student to subtract or to divide. They rehearse the arithmetic, not the decision about which arithmetic.

So where do the calculations get practised properly?

Past papers, and your own worksheets. Our archive carries AQA's own Business papers and mark schemes free and unaltered, and their calculation questions are the real thing.

Which activities go deepest?

Seven of the fifty-seven run twenty minutes or longer and were built to a later, richer standard: sources of finance, choosing a finance source, ethics against profit, JIT against JIC, the recruitment process, organisational structures and tall against flat. Those are the ones worth an intervention slot.

Is the coverage even across the two papers?

Yes, near enough. Paper 1's three topic areas and Paper 2's three are all covered at every sub-topic, which is unusual here: most subjects are stronger at the start of the course than the end.

Will I see who has completed them?

No. Following a shared link records nothing about who followed it, which is a deliberate choice about children's data.

Put one in front of a class

Tell us the subject and how long you have. You get a link to hand out, and it marks itself.

Create a free teacher account

Written by David Wright, Co-Founder, DoRevision.

David builds DoRevision with his son Noah (15). David has spent his career building EdTech products, and Noah has grown up watching lines of code being written. As a student at an important stage of his education, together they are building the revision platform that Noah is using to help revise for his GCSE exams and hopes his friends will find useful too.

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Related for teachers

  • Edexcel GCSE Business revision for teachers Every live Edexcel GCSE Business (1BS0) revision activity we have, grouped by what it's useful for in a lesson, split evenly across both themes, with the official past papers alongside.
  • Independent revision students actually keep doing What keeps a student revising when nobody is watching, what DoRevision does about it, and where the limits of that are. Written for the teacher who has run out of ways to chase Year 11 in April.
  • Ready-to-run GCSE revision activities A working list of GCSE revision activities, each with the thing it makes students recall, the moment they find out whether they were right, and what they do about it. Some run on a screen and some need nothing but a board.