Ofsted attacks standard of business courses

Despite students achievi

ng good results, inspectors found that they had little business acumen or ability to apply what they have learned to real life situations.

The report, Economics, Business and Enterprise Education, looked at a range of secondary school and college courses including vocational business qualifications.

Courses that were coursework-based came in for particular criticism.

It found that in 30 of the 39 schools inspected that ran vocational business courses with a focus on coursework "despite good results, the quality of students’ work, their knowledge and understanding, and their ability to apply learning to unfamiliar contexts and to demonstrate higher level skills, were often weak".

Inspectors also found that written assignments were "designed to meet narrowly defined assessment criteria". This meant there was little scope to debate issues or challenge more able students.

The report also looked at how primary and secondary schools promote business and enterprise skills among all pupils. While inspectors found good examples of schools using real life economic and business examples in lessons, a third of secondary schools were failing to provide good opportunities for students to engage directly with local businesses. This was even the case on vocational courses.

The best schools involved local employers in devising lessons, inspectors found.

Ofsted chief inspector Christine Gilbert added: "More should be done to directly involve students with the business world and local businesses."