Head of Department: Paul Eversfield ple@sevenoaksschool.org
The Economics Department
Choosing to take Economics will probably be the most difficult decision of your academic career to date. For some bizarre reason, you are contemplating choosing to spend two years studying a subject that many of you have never even experienced before or are even fully aware of. This is, depending upon your point of view, either foolhardy or courageous. Whichever, our job in the department is to make sure that it is a decision that you will never regret!
We will attempt to do this by making the course (within the confines of the syllabus and timetable) interesting, stretching, relevant and, ultimately, we hope, rewarding - both in terms of your satisfaction and your eventual result.
The department is accommodated on the ground floor of the Manor House, with teaching rooms in M1, M2, M4, M5 and M6 and the departmental office is in M3. There are five members of the department: Messrs Eversfield (PLE), Kiggell (LCK), Day (AGD), Hulston (PJH) and Smith (ACS). All members of the department have considerable responsibilities away from their teaching load but in spite of this, members of the department pride themselves on being accessible to all students and thus problems or queries of an academic nature can always be addressed to any teacher – at almost any time or place!
The Sixth Form
The teaching of the syllabus is shared by two teachers in both years (although only one for Standard Level Economics). The syllabus should be seen as an integrated whole and much of the assessment requires students to apply a broad range of ideas to a particular question.
Although the subject involves the formulation and understanding of theoretical concepts, the theories are applied to real-world examples to give it a much more applied flavour. It should also be remembered that Economics is not a discrete subject, since it incorporates elements of History, Geography, Psychology, Sociology, Political Studies and many other related fields of study.
Economics is a dynamic social science, forming part of the study of Individuals and Society, and is essentially about the concept of scarcity and the problem of resource allocation. Economics is offered at both Higher and Standard Level. It is a well-established and popular subject in the Sixth Form with approximately 120 students currently in each year of the course. All students, whether newly promoted from the Middle School or new to the school, start the subject from scratch with no presumption of prior knowledge.
The Economics course covers microeconomics, including a consideration of such basic concepts as scarcity, choice and the operation of simple markets, and how firms operate in markets that are either competitive or monopolistic. Macroeconomics covers economy-wide issues such as economic growth, unemployment, inflation and international trade. The role of the government is a central theme and the IB course has a strong emphasis on international issues and development economics.
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