GCSE Business past papers, marked against the real criteria

AQA, Edexcel and OCR Business papers with the mark scheme sitting beside every question. You write the answer in full; it is marked the way an examiner marks it, mark by mark, including the application marks that a correct, sensible, general answer never earns.

Open the papers, free, no card

What "marked against the criteria" actually means

Business is not marked on whether what you wrote is true, but on whether it is about the business in front of you. Almost every question hangs off a case study, and the marks past the first one are for using it. This is the most common way a pupil who understands the subject still comes out with half the marks.

The habit that costs the marks is writing about a business instead of the business. It is hard to see in your own work, because the sentences are true and they sound like Business.

Knowledge, application, analysis, judgement — and where answers stall

All three boards mark against the same three assessment objectives: knowledge of the concept, application of it to the context, and analysis and evaluation of what it means. Roughly a third of the paper is knowledge; the rest is what you do with it. Foundation and Higher do not exist here, because GCSE Business is untiered on AQA, Edexcel and OCR — every pupil sits the same paper, and the whole grade range turns on how far up that ladder an answer climbs.

Most answers stall at analysis. A pupil learns to write a chain — point, because, therefore — and the chain carries them to the middle band of every extended question and stops there. Analysis explains what would happen. Evaluation says which of the things that could happen matters most here, and why, and commits to it. That gap is where the top band sits, and it is not a writing skill: it is deciding something and taking responsibility for the decision on the page.

The calculations, and what the marks are for

The numerical questions are the only marks that do not depend on how well you write, and the formulas are short.

Contribution per unit is selling price minus variable cost per unit. Break-even output is fixed costs divided by contribution per unit. Margin of safety is actual sales minus break-even output. Net cash flow is cash in minus cash out, and the closing balance is the opening balance plus the net cash flow — one month's closing balance being the next month's opening balance. Gross and net profit margins are the relevant profit divided by revenue, times a hundred.

Worked through: a business selling at £12 a unit with variable costs of £7.50 has a contribution of £4.50. Against fixed costs of £2,700 a month, it breaks even at 2,700 ÷ 4.50 = 600 units a month, and if it sold 750 last month its margin of safety was 150 units.

Two marks go missing on questions like that, and neither is arithmetic. The first is the unit: 600 is not an answer, 600 units a month is, and a margin of safety of 150 units and one of £150 are different claims. The second is the sentence asked for after the number — what 600 units a month means for this business, which here is that sales can fall by 150 before it starts losing money. Show the working, for the same reason as in maths: a method mark survives a wrong figure, and a wrong figure carried forward correctly still earns it.

The nine- and twelve-mark questions want a decision

The longest questions hand you two options and tell you to justify, recommend or evaluate. They carry nine or twelve marks depending on the board and the paper, and they are not marked by ticking points; they are banded on the whole answer.

The bands reward a judgement that is supported, so the two failures at the top are both about the ending. One is the answer that argues both sides well and finishes with "it depends on the situation" — true, and worth nothing, because the situation is given in the case study and deciding within it was the task. The other picks an option in the last line without the reasoning pointing there, so the judgement is asserted rather than justified.

What lifts an answer into the top band is a decision that could only have been made about this business: not that a bank loan is better than new partners in general, but that it is better for this owner, who wants to keep control, has a £6,000 deposit already and a predictable monthly income to service the repayments from. The examiner wants the fact from the stem that made you choose. If you can swap in another business and the conclusion still stands, the judgement mark has not been earned.

That is what the marking here shows: not a model answer, but which of the nine marks your own paragraph earned, and which sentence was meant to earn the rest.

The papers

43 questions across 7 papers, each with its own criteria. Everything here is written in the boards' own format and judged against their published criteria; the papers themselves belong to the boards and are not reproduced here.

Try it on your own answer

Open a paper, write what you would have written in the exam, including the wrong bits, and read what comes back. It is free to start and does not ask for a card.

Open GCSE Business

The other subjects

Twenty-three in one place, aligned to AQA, Edexcel and OCR.