After having tutored numerous students from C/D grades to A/A*, I’ve grasped a strong understanding of where it is students go wrong. This blog post alone won’t quite be able to produce the same grade improvements, but I’ll do my best by highlighting the top 5 mistakes students make in A Level Economics.
The first, and potentially most common, even amongst high performing students, is a redundant conclusion. Students make 3 main mistakes when it comes to their conclusion:
- Repeating what they’ve already said
- Completely agreeing with one side of the argument
- Failing to lean towards one side at all.
A perfect conclusion respects the other side of the argument by giving it some consideration, but comes to a decision having thought about factors which would need to be considered in a real world situation.
For example, when the CMA had to make a decision as to whether they would allow the merger of Vodafone and Three, two telecommunications giants, they said yes under the condition that a. £11 billion would be invested over eight years to build a unified 5G network and b. tariffs would be capped for 3 years. Including conditions like this in a conclusion demonstrates that real world decisions aren’t black and white and they are subject to regulatory oversight, short/long run considerations and many other context-dependent factors.
Another common mistake made by students is simply confusing similar concepts. It’s very easily done, but don’t be the student that gets 0/25 because they confuse a current account deficit (relating to the balance of payments) with a budget deficit (relating to government finances). Other mistakes made by students include mixing up negative production externalities (costs incurred on a 3rd party during PRODUCTION, for example extraction of oil) with negative consumption externalities (costs incurred on a 3rd party during CONSUMPTION, for example when Oil is actually utilised as fuel). As a final example, appreciate that the criteria for a good to be considered a public good is for it to be non rivalrous and non excludable, not simply provided by the public sector.
Students also regularly underappreciate the importance of 3 things: Context, Diagrams, and Planning. Let’s dive into each one.
When provided with an Extract, funnily enough, the examiners want you to use it. Many students go into their exams having revised for months, wanting to show off as much as they know, and so they think they’re better than the extracts provided. Do examiners expect you to include information outside of the extract in your responses? Of course. But would they recommend you to talk about concepts which the Extracts can in no way be used to support or argue against? Of course not. The purpose of the Extracts is to support, and in many ways drive your essays, so unless you’re happy with getting no context marks in your essays, please find your points in the extracts provided and use your own knowledge to expand upon the analysis and implement diagrams and evaluation. That being said however, not every question will give you an entire extract. As I hope you’re aware, some 25 markers provide only a small amount of context, yet expect you to include the same amount as if they had given you an entire extract. Many students either aren’t aware of that fact, or simply lack sufficient context to support their essays. If you feel like the latter and your essays lack context, I’d recommend taking some time to research relevant context, or if you’re close to exams and need to prioritise content, the 2026 Context Pack will be everything you need.
Having discussed context, now let’s take a look at Diagrams. Given that diagrams are unique to economics, it makes sense that they’re where students perform worst. Students and teachers assume the issue with diagrams lies in not being able to draw them, which would make sense, but surprisingly the issues most commonly lie in 1. Knowing which diagrams to include and when, and 2. Being able to explain the diagrams. So much attention is placed on knowing how to draw diagrams that students ignore explaining them, essentially rendering them useless. Drawing diagrams is a memorisation game, and so if that’s where you’re going wrong, all I can recommend is to sit down and take the time to commit them to memory. If, like most students however, the issue is in explaining the diagrams, you need to first understand them, for which I’d recommend 2 resources. First, I’d recommend having a look at Econplusdals explanations of the diagrams. They don’t include completely everything, but they’re good enough to establish a basic understanding of what each diagram can be used to explain. Even better, consider the Diagram Explanation Bundle which has an in depth A* explanation of every diagram on the specificiation. Both methods work, one is faster and more detailed but comes at a slight cost.
Lastly, but in my opinion most detrimentally where students go wrong, is planning. Students tend to fall into two categories; either they think they’re better than planning and find out why they’re not later on, or they decide to spend more time planning than actually writing their essay. I was once in the former category, thinking I was better than planning, until I realised a plan doesn’t have to be 15 minutes with unnecessarily detailed analysis points written out, which students in the latter category let it become. Instead, a plan should simply include a brief structure with the main points you’re going to discuss, and a mention of any diagrams, evaluation points or context which you aim to include. You should be able to look at your plan and have an idea of how your essay will flow. It’s simply to provide structure, not to give you time to write entire analysis points before even beginning your actual essay.
So that concludes my blog post on the most common and detrimental mistakes students make in A Level Economics. Hopefully you found it useful and best of luck for your exams! If you’re looking for that extra boost as exam season approaches, I offer 1-1 Tuition services here 🙂 Stay tuned for more blog posts