BISness

BISness It’s been an exciting and busy term for the British International School Hanoi business studies department with the introduction of new staff, courses and business themed ECAs. Mr Byatt and Mr Kelly have brought new skills to the team. 

It’s been an exciting and busy term for the British International School Hanoi Business Studies Department with the introduction of new staff, courses and business themed ECAs. Mr Byatt and Mr Kelly have brought new skills to the team.

Mr Byatt has offered an ECA about personal finance and investing. Students were made aware of various investment options. They learned to analyse and evaluate company accounts in order to select the best businesses to invest in. They followed this up with a competition to see who could invest in the most profitable businesses in a virtual investment setting. Mr Kelly has considerable experience with economics and we are lucky to be able to use his expertise to offer economics at International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme level to our first cohort of students from August 2017.

Students are making progress in our challenging new business management IB course and are busy applying their business knowledge to help solve real business problems. Our year 11 and 13 mock results were quite promising overall. All students have sufficient areas of development to keep them busy over the coming weeks as they prepare for their final exams. I encourage you to contact me directly if they tell you otherwise! We want our students to be successful in their IGCSE and A Levels and hope that they are putting in frequent, focused study hours to prepare.

BIShop continues to grow and has become increasingly popular with our primary students who are already keen to learn about how businesses operate. We moved from a business classroom to our own premises this year and hope to be able to fill it with products that both staff and students want to buy. The shop continues to have a socially responsible community spirit with profits going to charity or being reinvested in the business to help BIShop to grow. Service orientation is one of the top 10 skills our students will need when they enter the workplace, irrespective of the career path they choose.

In other news, it takes a village to raise a business studies student and we have been very fortunate to have been supported by the wider business community once again this year. Year 12 have benefited from visits from Andrew Nisbet, the General Manager of the Hilton in Hanoi and James Westropp, a Banker from Barclays in London. 11 PIB got to visit the Donkey Bakery to learn about inclusive business recruitment practises. 

We are eternally grateful for the support of these individuals who help bring our subject to life in a way that can’t be replicated by teachers in the classroom. If you would like to offer our students your own experiences of business life please do not hesitate to contact me.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish year 11 and 13 the very best of luck in their upcoming examinations. 

Rachel Stevenson, Business studies leader