Just a short one today! Budget Day always brings a raft of material for us to discuss with our students and today's was no exception. However, getting the most out of it with a jam-packed scheme of work can be tricky.
When I downloaded the 2020 Budget report earlier it came to 135 pages, so it's not really feasible for students to cover it all. The BBC tends to create a 'Summary of Key Points' and 'What It Means for You' digest, which are nice quick overviews. I like students to engage with academic or heavy reading as I think it makes it less intimidating when they get to Uni, so I'd also recommend the Executive Summary which is about 7 pages including some graphs. It's also split up into neat sections if you wanted to divvy it up and give students or groups of students a section each. Tutor2u usually make some great resources, and this year they've made some great slides and printouts.
In the past I've set some Budget research as homework, but I've found that unless I'm really clear about what I want from students, I don't get the level of engagement I would want. As a result, I've made 3 activities which would work well as classwork or homework.
The first looks at the impacts of the budget on different groups in society and pairs well with the 'What it means for you' article above.
The second is designed to be used to help students access some key information from the Executive Summary. They don't need all of it, just a few sections (it comes to about 3 pages), but students could easily find this online. This is particularly good if students haven't studied much Macro yet as it doesn't require much analysis.
The third encourages students to look more specifically at policies and the intentions behind these as well as the possible disadvantages. Students could pick any policies they like, or you could direct each to a specific area of the budget using the headings on either the BBC Summary or the Executive Summary.