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Citizenship at key stage 4 (Year 10-11)
Unit 05: How the economy functions
Section 3: How does the economy stay on track?
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Objectives |
| Children should learn: |
- how the economy can change and how this affects business, eg stability, booms and slumps, and changes to unemployment rates and inflation
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Activities |
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Outcomes |
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Children: |
- Pupils investigate how changes in the economy can affect local business, eg a shortage of customers, or a shortage of skilled employees leading to rising costs. Invite a member of the local business community to come to the school to talk to pupils, or suggest issues for pupils to consider. What solutions to these changes can they suggest, eg an advertising campaign to boost product sales, incentives for people to learn new skills? Ask pupils to think of other changes to supply and demand in the economy, eg how inflation causes rising prices (too much money chasing too few goods results in prices going up), rising unemployment, more people claiming income support.
- Ask pupils to discuss what businesses and individuals want from the economy,
eg keeping the economy stable as this helps stabilise prices and salaries, enabling individuals to plan their future and feel more secure. What can the government do to keep the economy stable, eg help people develop skills for the jobs available, take steps to control inflation, help businesses to be efficient? Again, this kind of discussion may be enhanced if representatives from a local business/financial institution are invited to come in and talk with pupils.
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- identify problems that can result from economic change
- understand the government's role in dealing with the problems of instability in the economy
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Points to note |
- Local business people invited into the classroom need to be carefully briefed on the context of their visit, to ensure that they talk about the effect on their business of changes in the economy, rather than about running their business.
- Link with history: modern world history, including America during the Depression and New Deal, and Weimar Germany after 1929.
- Link with geography: economic activity at a local scale (3.1ii).
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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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