Sarah Phillips, Business and Economics Subject Advisor

Welcome to Enterprise and Marketing! With so many new centres this year, and it being the first teaching of the redeveloped course, we thought it might be useful to highlight key information and support available to you to help you every step of the way throughout the course.

First steps - let us know!

Make sure you have told us you are teaching the course – complete the online form so that we can keep you updated with latest news, resources and events. If you are a completely new centre or new to Cambridge Nationals, make sure you have centre approval. There’s more information on the admin section of our website. 

Once all of that is done, check that you are teaching the redeveloped specification, J837, and not the legacy as this is the qualification that will count on the performance tables in 2024. Current Year 11 will be the final year group to complete the legacy J819 course.

Teach Cambridge

The next thing to do is get set up on our new secure teacher website Teach Cambridge. This site, designed by teachers for teachers, includes all the support and resources that you will need, personalised for you and the subjects you teach. 

As it is secure, your Exams Officer will need to add you to your centre’s account to give you access. Send this My Cambridge link to your Exams Officer if they need any further information or guidance. 

Once you have access, it’s simple to set up. Just make sure you add the courses you are delivering so you get all the updates, resources, and training relevant to them. Select Enterprise and Marketing Level 1/Level 2 (2022+) from the list of options. You can add other courses at any time by clicking on My account, Account, and Settings. 

Once set up, teachers of the new course will also need to complete the Essentials for NEA training. This is a short course, with important information and advice required before starting any NEA work. You can access the course on the qualification page of Teach Cambridge – choose Assessment, then NEA/Coursework.

Resources

You’ll find a range of useful resources on the Teach Cambridge website. These include:

Teaching links

• A curriculum planner, including an overview of the units, ideas for how you might structure your course over two or three years and a reminder about the terminal assessment rule (which is really important and different to what you might be used to in the legacy qualification).
• Schemes of work for all three units, plus a blank template for you to use to create your own scheme of work (SoW). Our SoW includes lesson ideas and activities, as well as useful links to support your delivery. These provide a great starting point to creating your own SoW.
• Further down the menu there is a For your students link. This includes a Student guide to NEA assignments which you can share with students, and maybe even parents/carers, just before starting the NEA. It’s also a useful read for teachers to give an overview of the NEA rules.

Assessment links

• The Understanding the assessment document in the assessment support link is generic for all our Cambridge National courses. It outlines the assessment methods and includes the question types and command words used in the examined assessment (EA) exam. It also includes the command words used in the Non-Examined Assessment (NEA) criteria which is not only useful guidance for when assessing students’ work, it can also help with feedback when distinguishing between “limited”, “adequate” or “fully suitable” assessment evidence.

Exams links

• In the sample assessment materials section, there’s a sample question paper for the new specification, which you can use as a mock paper, or as a starting point to create your own. We have also produced a guide to our sample assessment material exploring the features of the sample question paper to help you understand the structure of the papers and support you when preparing students for the exam in 2024.
• Additional support for exam preparation is provided by candidate style answers. These have been produced by examiners to help teachers understand how assessment objectives are applied to written responses. This insight can be directly useful for teachers when marking mocks and preparing students for the external assessment.
• ExamBuilder is our tool for creating your own tests and exam papers. As this is a new specification, ExamBuilder will become more useful for setting mocks in future years when there are more questions from the current specification available. Current questions available will be those from the legacy qualification (J819) papers, so although they will be relevant in terms of topics, they will not be from the new specification. The mapping document shows what has changed and what is the same.

The NEA/coursework links

• The set live assignments are stored under the assignments and project for each NEA unit. They are replaced each June and are only live for the January and June series the following academic year. Check the dates on the front cover to make sure you are using the correct one. 
• There are sample NEA assessment materials here for both NEA units (R068 and R069) which can be used to help you understand the requirements of the set assignment. 
• When you’re ready to start assessing, the unit recording sheets can be found under this link too. These need to be completed and sent with the sample to your moderator. A completed example is provided in the ‘Essential for the NEA’ course. 
• To help you assess the NEA there is candidate style work for both R068 and R069 with commentary showing how to apply the marking criteria. Don’t forget about the understanding the assessment document I mentioned earlier which is also helpful at this stage. 
• The set assignment feedback form is also in the NEA forms section. This is used to record feedback given to students. Again, there are examples of these in the Essential for the NEA course.

Promoting the course

Looking ahead to options evenings and recruiting students for next year, another really useful resource is the teacher toolkits, which have everything you need to promote the course to students and parents/carers, including leaflets, posters, guides and an editable PowerPoint. You can download these, or you can order hard copies if you would prefer. 

CPD

We run a number of CPD sessions throughout the academic year to support you, many of them free. These sessions range from essential courses (such as the Essentials for the NEA) to optional courses and events. 

For the new spec, J837, these include: 

• Choosing OCR: an introduction to the new spec and the support available. 
• Starting to teach: everything you need to get started, including an overview of the course structure and assessment requirements. 
• Preparing for the NEA: how you can help your students prepare for their internal assessment, including a chance to mark real student work. 
• Ask the Subject Advisor: A chance to discuss your queries with one of our subject advisors. 
• Ask the Moderator: An opportunity to question the moderator, one of the people who will look at the sample work you send us. 

For the legacy spec, J819: 

• Ask the Examiner: The chance to question the examiner on the examined unit, R064.

You can book a place on these and other courses by going to our professional development page and choosing the relevant course. You can also book from the training link on Teach Cambridge.

Questions?

If you have any questions, whether simple or complex, we’re here to support you to get the best for your students. Please don’t hesitate to contact us. We can respond to emails or give you a call to talk through anything to do with delivering the course.

Stay connected

If you have any questions you can email support@ocr.org.uk, call us on 01223 553998 or tweet us @OCR_BusEcon. You can also sign up to subject updates and receive information about resources and support.

About the author

Sarah joined the Business and Economics team in September 2022. She has over 20 years’ experience as a teacher of Business, Economics and Finance and in leadership roles including Head of Department, Head of Sixth Form and Assistant Principal. She has been an assessor for A Level Economics and holds a degree in Business Economics and the RSA Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA).