Starting A-Level Business: what to expect and how to prepare

A-Level Business is one of the most popular A-Level choices in the UK, and many students start it with no GCSE in the subject. That is fine. The course does not expect you to know business vocabulary on day one. It expects you to learn how to think like a manager: look at a real firm, understand its situation, and decide what it should do next.

What A-Level Business is really about

At its core, A-Level Business is the study of decision-making in real organisations. Every topic leads back to one question: what should this business do, and why? Three UK firms show the kind of thinking you will practise.

• Greggs, the bakery chain, had 2,739 shops at the end of 2025 and sales of £2,151 million. But its underlying profit before tax fell 9.4%, partly because employment costs rose, including higher employer National Insurance (a tax firms pay on wages) from April 2025 [5]. A Business student asks: should Greggs raise prices, cut costs, or keep opening new shops?
• Gymshark, the gym-wear brand, was started by Ben Francis in 2012 when he was a teenager. It grew online and only opened its first permanent shop, on Regent Street in London, in October 2022 [6]. Why would an online brand pay for an expensive shop? That is a marketing and strategy question.
• John Lewis Partnership, owner of John Lewis and Waitrose, is owned on behalf of its staff, who are called Partners. In March 2026 it paid them a bonus for the first time since 2022, worth 2% of salary [7]. Does shared ownership make staff work harder? That is a people management question.

You will not be asked to remember these facts in the exam. You will be given a new case study and asked to use the same kind of thinking.

The five main areas you will study

These areas are not separate boxes. A decision in one area always affects the others. If Greggs opens more evening shops, that is marketing, but it also needs staff (people), stock (operations) and money (finance).

What the course and exams look like

AQA: a new specification from 2026

A specification (or "spec") is the official list of what you study and how you are examined. AQA, the largest exam board for this subject, has a new A-Level Business specification, code 7138. It is taught from September 2026, with the first A-Level exams in summer 2028 [1][2]. Students who started Year 12 (the first year of A-Level, age 16–17) before September 2026 continue on the older specification, code 7132 [1].

Under the new AQA specification there are three written papers, each 2 hours long, worth 90 marks and 33.3% of the A-Level [3]. Each paper has two case studies, and each case study is followed by five compulsory questions worth 45 marks in total [3].

• Paper 1: what business is, marketing and finance.
• Paper 2: operations, people and business culture.
• Paper 3: business and society, the external environment, strategy and change [3].

AQA says the new course gives more attention to areas such as digital technology and AI, ethical sourcing, employee wellbeing, and ESG (environmental, social and governance) reporting [2].

Edexcel: 9BS0

If your school uses Pearson Edexcel, your course is 9BS0. It also has three 2-hour papers, but each is worth 100 marks. Papers 1 and 2 are each 35% of the grade; Paper 3 is 30% and is based on a context that Pearson publishes each November, so you can research the industry before the exam [4].

The skills that earn the marks

Knowing definitions is only the start. The higher marks come from four skills.

1. Application. Use the facts in the case study. "Costs may rise" is general. "Greggs' employment costs rose after the increase in employer National Insurance" is applied.
2. Analysis. Build a chain of logic, where each step causes the next. For example: higher wage costs → lower profit per sale → less money to open new shops → slower growth.
3. Evaluation. Weigh up both sides. What does the answer depend on? Which factor matters most for this business?
4. Judgement. Reach a clear, justified conclusion. Examiners reward a decision, not a list of "on the one hand, on the other hand".

The maths

Business uses simple maths, but you must be accurate and quick. The key methods are percentages, percentage change, ratios and break-even.

Practise percentage change too: (new − old) ÷ old × 100. If sales rise from £2,014 million to £2,151 million, that is a rise of about 6.8%. That is the real change in Greggs' sales from 2024 to 2025 [5].

Common beginner mistakes

• Writing about business in general. Every paragraph should mention the business in the case study.
• Mixing up revenue and profit. A firm can have rising revenue and falling profit, as Greggs did in 2025 [5].
• Stopping after one step. "This will increase costs" is a point, not analysis. Ask "so what?" two or three times.
• Sitting on the fence. Give a judgement and say what it depends on.
• Avoiding the maths. Calculation questions are usually the quickest marks on the paper.

A 4-week "get ready" plan

About 30 minutes a day, four or five days a week, is enough.

• Week 1 – Language. Learn 20 core terms (start with the keywords above). Read one UK business news story a day and note which area it belongs to: marketing, people, operations, finance or strategy.
• Week 2 – Maths. Practise percentages, percentage change, ratios and break-even until you can do them without a calculator for simple numbers. Check your answers.
• Week 3 – Firms. Choose three UK businesses you know (for example a supermarket, a clothing brand and a café chain). For each, write down its customers, competitors, objectives and one problem it faces.
• Week 4 – Writing. For one news story, write a short paragraph with a three-step analysis chain and a one-sentence judgement. Ask someone to check that every step follows from the one before.

If you do this, you will start Year 12 already using the habits that examiners reward.