Economics

Will the UK government’s latest growth plan really grow the economy or just ‘grow’ newspaper headlines? Why is owning a home out of reach for so many young people, and how could we resolve this? And will artificial intelligence take your job… or create it?

At Dulwich, we equip our Economics students with the tools to understand and question the world around them. From day one of the A level, pupils are encouraged to debate, analyse and apply real-world case studies to make the subject their own. Through the discipline’s study of decision making under scarcity, pupils develop an analytical framework, the ‘economist’s toolkit’, that provides them with a valuable mindset for any of the exciting opportunities that they may encounter in their careers after leaving the College.

What we teach

Economics is offered exclusively in the Upper School at Dulwich, and we follow the AQA A level course. Teaching groups have a dedicated teacher for each side of the course, Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, which are taught in parallel across Years 12 and 13. Key topics covered include:

Microeconomics

• Markets, Market Failure and Government Intervention
• Inequality and Poverty
• Behavioural Economics
• Theory of the Firm and Market Structures
• Competition Policy, Privatisation and Nationalisation
• Labour Markets

Macroeconomics

• Macroeconomic Policy Objectives: Both primary (growth, inflation, unemployment, the current account) and secondary (the environment, inequality etc.)
• Aggregate Demand and Supply (Classical and Keynesian)
• Monetary, Fiscal and Supply-Side Policies
• Globalisation, Trade and Protectionism
• Development Economics
• Financial Markets

Enrichment

First and foremost, provision is made for all students to go beyond the syllabus within lessons, as teachers push pupils to develop a deeper understanding of the material at hand. Beyond the classroom, there are weekly meetings of:

• The highly popular Economics Society (Years 9-13) which hosts guest speakers and pupil-led talks
• Further Economics classes: extension for our aspiring university economists in the Upper School

Other regular activities include:

• The annual SSLP Young Economists’ Conference for Y12 pupils from Dulwich and our partner schools
• A wide range of competitions: Pupils regularly excel in essay writing, entrepreneurship (notably CAMSTART) and video-making competitions
• Political Economy Review magazine: An annual showcase of top pupil writing, published to raise money for the College Bursary Appeal fund

We also offer:

• Our own department library, with excellent wider reading resources
• Enrichment opportunities across the College:
  • Middle and Lower School enterprise competitions
  • Junior School ‘Economics Experience Day’ for Year 5

Destinations

Economics is one of the most popular choices of A level at Dulwich and the department is very proud that Economics, Management and related subjects are typically either the most or second most popular choice of degree course for Alleynians, each year.

Students go on from Dulwich to study Economics, Management, PPE and related courses at a wide range of top universities in the UK and abroad. Over recent years it has been particularly pleasing to see Dulwich pupils start such courses at highly distinguished departments such as:

• UK: Cambridge, LSE, Oxford, UCL and Warwick
• International: Chicago, NYU and Yale