Is GCSE Business Studies Hard? – A Student’s Opinion and Analysis

When it comes to GCSEs, students will always have their own opinions on how the subject was. Some subjects get dubbed as really easy, while others will be considered very difficult. As these opinions are generally based on one student’s own opinion, it can be difficult to figure out in a more objective sense which GCSE subjects are actually more difficult and which ones are easier.

In short, GCSE Business Studies is not the hardest of GCSEs in my opinion. This is because it has fairly straightforward content. The amount of content is also very typical, relative to other GCSEs. The pass rate, and grades A/7 or above, are also average compared to other GCSE subjects. There are only two exams and both are two hours or less.

From this brief answer, you can see that GCSE Business Studies isn’t exactly the hardest subject. In this article, I’ll take you through all the information that led me to this conclusion.

What does it mean for a GCSE to be hard?

In order to decide if a GCSE is hard, first things first, we need to establish what we mean by “hard”. While this is subjective, by using a criteria we can make it as factually-based as possible.

In order for a GCSE subject to be hard, it must mean that students find it difficult. This can occur for several reasons, such as the amount of content, the difficulty of the content as well as how it is assessed and how hard the exams are.

We can see if students are finding a GCSE hard based on how many students are passing the subject and how many students are getting the top grades.

While trying to stay factually-based, there is undoubtedly a subjective element to this. As a result, I will also be considering the opinions of students in whether GCSE Business Studies is hard or not.

Due to this, my criteria for deciding if GCSE Business Studies is hard is the following:

• Pass rate
• Rate of students achieving grade 7/A or above
• Amount of GCSE Business Studies content
• Difficulty of GCSE Business Studies content
• Exams
• Students’ opinions

Criteria 1: Pass rates

The proportion of students that receive passing grades from a GCSE says a lot about its level of difficulty. After all, if students are able to do well enough in the exams to pass, then they must have understood enough of the content to be able to do so.

For 2024, the GCSE Business Studies pass rate was 66.7%. As this is over half, it would suggest that GCSE Business is at least a manageable subject, so not a particularly difficult one. Although, it means rather little without context.

For 2024, the pass rate for all GCSEs was 67.6%. This shows that while slightly lower than the average, the pass rate for GCSE Business Studies is still very close to it. This suggests that GCSE Business Studies is a fairly average GCSE in terms of its difficulty in terms of the pass rate.

For more context, we can also compare both the GCSE Business Studies pass rates and the overall GCSE pass rates from previous years. Have a look at the following table, which shows the GCSE pass rates for 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

For more information about the pass rates, you can check out this page on the FFT Education Data Lab website. You can learn more about the pass rate for all GCSEs by checking out this page and this page on the government website.  

From this table we can see that in all these years, the difference between GCSE Business Studies and the overall GCSE pass rate is fairly small. While more recently, in both 2023 and 2024, the overall GCSE pass rate has been higher than for GCSE Business Studies.

Thus, it suggests that overall, GCSE Business Studies is about the same as the overall GCSE pass rate making it average, rather than a hard subject.

Criteria 2: Grade 7 and above attainment

The proportion of students receiving the top grades in GCSE Business Studies shows us more about how well students are able to perform in the subject. In this case, by top grades, I’m referring to the proportion of students with a grade 7/A or above.

For 2024, 19.6% of students received a grade 7 or higher in GCSE Business Studies. This is in comparison to the 21.7% of students who received a grade 7 or higher overall in all GCSEs.

While the GCSE Business Studies rate is slightly lower, with just over 1% difference, this isn’t very significant. This shows that GCSE Business Studies is at the same level as other GCSEs and is most likely at a rather average difficult.

We can look further back on previous years to give us greater context into the achievement of students taking GCSE Business Studies in comparison to the overall GCSE rates. The following table displays data from 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024 for both GCSE Business Studies and for all GCSEs.

For more information about the GCSE Business Studies rate for getting grade 7 or above, you can check out this page on the FFT Education Data Lab website. You can learn more about the overall rates for students getting top grades at GCSE by checking out this page and this page on the government website.

Looking at all these rates and their closeness, it’s clear that GCSE Business Studies isn’t a hard GCSE based on how students perform.

Criteria 3: Content difficulty

One of the best ways to figure out if a GCSE is hard or not is to look at what the content is like. After all, the content of a GCSE is what students are actually being taught in lessons so if this is difficult then it’s safe to assume that the whole GCSE would be.

In this case, we can look at both the difficulty of the content itself as well as the amount of content that GCSE Business Studies students will have over the course.

The difficulty of the GCSE Business Studies content is designed as all GCSEs to continue from the key stage 3 (KS3) content. As business studies as a subject is unavailable at key stage 3, the course is an introductory course as students are unlikely to have any real business knowledge.

Due to this, it’s safe to assume that unlike subjects, such as GCSE Further Maths, the content isn’t going to be very difficult so that it is open to all students. You can learn more about GCSE Further Maths by checking out this Think Student article.

Once again, this suggests that GCSE Business Studies is no more difficult than any other GCSE.

Criteria 4: Content quantity

As previously mentioned, the two ways of figuring out if a subject’s content makes it hard is by looking at the difficulty and level of the content as well as looking at the amount of content. Other than sitting in on a whole two years of lessons, it can be difficult to figure out just how much content there is for GCSE Business Studies.

However, by looking at its official specification and comparing the amount of content to that of another GCSE, we can see at least relatively, how much content it has.

In comparison to a GCSE, which is considered to have a lot of content, such as GCSE History, GCSE Business Studies doesn’t have anywhere near as much content.

GCSE Business Studies has six units for the entirety of the course, each having rather short topics. Whereas GCSE History has four main units or historical studies, which would then each be broken down into pretty long topics of their own.

Please note that this information is primarily based off the AQA GCSE Business Studies and AQA GCSE History courses. You can find more about them by checking out these links to the AQA website here and here respectively.

Personally, having studied both GCSE Business Studies and GCSE History, I found the workload to be significantly different between the two GCSEs. This was because GCSE History had a lot more content with there being so much more information to learn and then memorise for exams, which for me made it more difficult.

As GCSE Business Studies has significantly less content, it suggests that it isn’t particularly a hard subject.

Criteria 5: Exam overview

When looking into the difficulty of a GCSE subject, looking at what the exams are like is important as these exams are what the whole two years of study boils down to.

For GCSE Business Studies, students have to sit two exams, this is true for all the exam boards. Although exactly which topics are on each paper will depend on the exam board.

For both AQA and Pearson Edexcel, both exams are worth 50% of the qualification and will last 1 hour and 45 minutes each. You can learn more about this on the AQA website and the Pearson Edexcel website.

For OCR, the papers are still worth 50% each, but each paper is 1 hour and 30 minutes. For more on this, have a look at this guide by OCR.

For WJEC, the first paper is 2 hours long and worth 62.5%, whereas the second paper is 1 hour and 30 minutes and worth 37.5%. You can learn more about this here on the WJEC website.

For CCEA, there are still two papers that are 1 hour and 30 minutes each, just like OCR. However, they are worth 40% each as there is also a coursework element worth 20%. You can learn more about this here on the CCEA website.

As these exams are of a standard length, in comparison to other GCSE subjects, this once again shows nothing to say that GCSE Business Studies is a hard subject. You can find more about how long GCSE exams are by checking out this Think Student article.

Criteria 6: Students’ perception

When I chose my GCSE options, one of my choices was GCSE Business Studies. As mentioned above, as deciding whether a GCSE is hard or not is subjective, I’ve decided to share my own opinion of what GCSE Business Studies is like and if I find it hard.

Having done GCSE Business Studies myself, I would say no. Personally, I did not find GCSE Business Studies to be not a hard GCSE. I feel this is mostly because the content is fairly straightforward, even though it requires some maths, you don’t even need to be good at maths to be able to do it.

You could even argue that GCSE Business Studies although once again, this is a pretty subjective claim.

However, another thing to do to make it a little less subjective would be to ask other students. In 2023, Think Student published its findings from a survey, in which GCSE Business Studies was voted as the second easiest GCSE subject. You can view this Think Student article here.

This was with 16.34% of the poll choosing it as the easiest GCSE subject. Please note that this was the poll from 2023 so is not currently active.