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Citizenship at key stage 4 (Year 10-11)
Unit 05: How the economy functions
Section 2: What is the economy and how does it function?
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Objectives |
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- about how and why government spends its money
- what the economy is and how it functions
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Activities |
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Outcomes |
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Children: |
- Pupils use local and central government websites to investigate how public money is spent. Give them a list of ways in which the government might spend a limited amount of money, eg helping to cut unemployment, helping businesses to be more efficient, improving education, health, transport. Ask pupils to work in pairs or small groups to rank these in importance and to explain their ranking.
- Ask pupils in groups to work out what the government offers in terms of public services and benefits to different members of society, eg one group represents a child, others a single adult, a parent, a retired person, a person who has a disability. Pupils work out how the government helps each group and present their findings to the class. Class discussion should include the varied levels of dependency on government support over a lifetime and the interdependency of the population and the government as a result.
- Using a newspaper article, video, or other stimulus material, the class discusses the effects of people avoiding paying their taxes. What are the possible consequences for the individual? Is this a criminal or civil offence? What might happen if the person is prosecuted, eg penalty fines, a prison sentence? What are the consequences for the community and society?
- Some of the public services provided by government can also be provided in other ways, eg schools, healthcare. Pupils work in groups, taking on the roles previously suggested, to think about how the services they need could be provided.
- Review activity: what is the economy and how does it function? Construct a diagram to show the links and connections (interdependence) in the economy by drawing three circles representing the individual, business and government. In groups, pupils discuss these and decide where to add labelled arrows to represent the flows of money, products, work, etc between the three circles.
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- know how and why government collects revenue through different forms of taxation
- identify how and why government spends money and give examples of public services
- recognise that benefits for society, eg state education, NHS healthcare and the welfare state, are paid for through taxation
- recognise what the economy is and that there are links and connections between individuals, business and government through the flow of money, products and activity, including work
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Points to note |
- Link with ICT: pupils use ICT to undertake research into how public money is spent. This section could be expanded to explore how taxation is spent by the local council. Unit 7 'Local democracy' and unit 8 'Leisure and sport in the local community' in the key stage 3 citizenship scheme of work may provide a starting point for this.
- This section could be linked with unit 10 'Rights and responsibilities in the world of work'.
- Link with history: political, social, economic modern world history, including work and employment, industry and agriculture, government intervention and free trade.
- The Treasury website (www.treasury.gov.uk) has useful information about the economy. Local authority websites also provide information on how public money is spent.
- If internet access is not possible for the class, download the information in advance and use it as a reference source.
- This section builds a picture of the economy. In simple terms, the economy is made up of everyone who buys and sells things, everyone who works, everyone who receives and pays money to the government, and the government's own income and expenditure.
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This unit is divided into sections. Each section contains a sequence of
activities with related objectives and outcomes. You can view this unit by
moving through the sections or print/download the whole unit.
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