How the simulation meets your specification

The simulation is built on the decision-making content common to UK Business specifications, so the same session serves several boards. The primary mappings are:

• Edexcel A-Level Business 9BS0 — Themes 1–4
• AQA A-Level Business 7132 — sections 3.2–3.10
• OCR A-Level Business H431 — marketing, operations, finance, HR and strategy content
• Pearson BTEC Level 3 Business — applied decision-making units

The product's stated alignment is to AQA, Edexcel, OCR and BTEC. Cambridge IGCSE 0450 and IB Business Management teachers also use it for applied decision-making; those are supported but are not the primary mapping. A sub-clause-level table is published on the Mapping page.

Full = a mechanic the student must operate. Partial = surfaced through events and structured discussion.

The closest fits are the decision-making sections, fully exercised by the core mechanics:

• 3.3 Improving marketing performance — pricing, promotion, product, competitive response
• 3.5 Improving financial performance — cash flow, finance sources, investment, VAT

Also supported, at decision-making level:

• 3.2 Managers, leadership and decision making — the strategy choice and decisions under time pressure
• 3.4 Improving operational performance — contracts, operating costs, supply-chain disruption
• 3.6 Improving HR performance — specialist hiring and team roles
• 3.7–3.10 Strategic position, direction, methods and managing change — leaderboard analysis, R&D, pivots after a shock

OCR H431 and BTEC Level 3 — yes. The mechanics are board-agnostic at the decision-making level and map cleanly to the marketing, operations, finance, HR and strategy content, and to BTEC's applied, scenario-based assessment style.

Cambridge IGCSE 0450 and IB Business Management — supported and used by teachers for applied practice. We do not present a sub-clause mapping for these, because they are not the primary specifications the product is built against. The transferable skill — apply a concept, observe the consequence, justify the next decision — holds across all of them.

The three ESG dilemmas are fixed and named in the product — supplier ethics, carbon emissions and workplace conduct — so the ethics discussion is grounded in a specific decision the class has just voted on.

• AO1 — Knowledge. Reinforced through an in-game knowledge-check quiz the teacher launches during play; terminology is used at the point of decision, not in isolation.
• AO2 — Application. Every pricing, finance, hiring and contract decision is theory applied to the firm's specific position. This is a core strength.
• AO3 — Analysis. Cause and effect is visible in real time: a price rise produces a measurable demand change; a late VAT return produces a penalty. This is a core strength.
• AO4 — Evaluation. The structured end-of-session reflection and the auto-generated class analysis give students concrete trade-offs to weigh in their next written answer — the judgement that the highest-tariff questions reward.

The highest-tariff extended-response questions are decided on AO3 analysis and AO4 evaluation, not on AO1 recall. Students lose marks when their analysis is generic and their judgement is unsupported.

Because the simulation makes students live the trade-off — absorb a cost increase and lose margin, or pass it on and lose volume — they enter the written task with a concrete, contextual example that anchors both the analysis chain and the "it depends on…" judgement. Paired with our Model Answers and Sentence Stem Library, the experience converts into exam phrasing.

The teacher dashboard provides a transparent performance breakdown for every student, weighted across six components:

The session also produces a printable class report, an AI-generated class analysis, an exportable activity log, and grouped student reflections. This is formative evidence for your own records — it does not award a grade against the specification.

We do not claim a measured exam uplift, because we have not yet measured one. The Autumn 2026 pilot is collecting that evidence across a cohort of schools, with anonymised findings published in December 2026.

What is established is the mechanism: applied decision-making, immediate cause-and-effect feedback and structured reflection are recognised drivers of higher-order thinking. We would rather you judge the fit from the live product than rely on a figure we cannot yet stand behind.

Two reliable entry points:

• Mid-theme consolidation. After teaching pricing, finance or external influences, run the simulation as a single lesson and reflect against the content just covered.
• Mock-preparation week. Run it 5–7 days before a Section B / extended-response mock; students draw on the lived experience directly in their evaluation paragraphs.

A session runs in three teacher-paced phases — Incorporation & Marketplace, Crisis & Compliance, Final Sprint — and is flexible-length, from a 15-minute tutor slot to a full 60-minute lesson.

Up to 30 students per session, as individuals or in teams the system allocates automatically (with a manual override). Any modern browser works — Chromebook, laptop, tablet or phone — and the teacher projects the dashboard from their own device. No application to install. Larger classes split across two parallel sessions with separate PINs.

One thing: allow the domain thebusiness.school. A one-page IT information sheet — the single domain to whitelist, the data transmitted, and the compliance summary — is provided to forward straight to your network team. Request it on the pilot page or by email.

The teacher demo is free to try now, with no sign-up. Schools accepted into the Autumn 2026 Pilot Programme (15 September – 15 December 2026) receive a full teacher licence free of charge for the pilot term, with no obligation to purchase afterwards.

Paid Teacher, Department and Whole-School licences launch in 2027. The pilot is the route to use the product free this academic year and to shape the release before it is priced.

No accounts. Students join with a PIN and a nickname; no email, password, real name or other personal data is collected from students. The platform is UK GDPR compliant by design, ICO registered (ZC133810) and aligned to KCSIE 2024/25. The full pack your DPO will request is on the Data Protection page.