The coursework for both HL and SL is worth 25% of your final grade. Depending upon when your teacher introduces it, you should have almost a year to complete it, and providing you follow my advice on this blog, there is no reason why you shouldn’t attain top marks for it.

For the coursework at both SL and HL, you need to study a real life company (or a group of companies, or an  industry), and analyze a problem that it  faces (they face) or a decision that it is thinking of making (they are thinking of making). It is important that the problem, or decision  is ´contemporaneous´ i.e. they are facing the problem or making the decision now. Don’t analyze a problem the company solved or a decision that company made one or two years ago. If you do this, your work will be too historical and too descriptive.

The requirements for the HL coursework are different to the requirements for the SL coursework. Both are assessed slightly differently too. More information about this will be posted on the blog soon.

The table below highlights the differences:-

For the HL coursework, it’s ´ ..all about the primary data collection´. You are expected to visit a real company or organisation and collect both primary AND secondary data from the company. For the SL coursework it’s ´… all about the secondary sources”. In other words you are expected to base it on a wide range of secondary sources only.

The business theory that you include in the HL coursework should relate to the HL and SL syllabus content, and the theory that you include in SL coursework should relate to the SL syllabus content only.