Economics is generally better respected than business. A lot of the people I'e encountered regard Business A-Level as "the poor man's economics". There is an economics GCSE, although Business Studies GCSE will provide you with a good grounding. I can only speak for the AQA ayllabus, but there is some, if only a little maths - graph drawing, calculating costs, a few simple ezuations to do with elasticity. Nothing that someone with a pass at GCSE maths won't be able to handle.
Class size and gender ratios of course vary.
AQA ayllabus contains a coursework vs. an extra paper option.Coursework involves formulating your own question, whch teachers will help you with. I found it veyr easy - 97% after the first edit - I would recommend a Microeconomic one.
Again, I can only speak for AQA, and more detailed syllabusses (syllabi?) ould probably be found on the exam boards' respective websited but a rough outline of AS would be:
Micro;
- Markets and market failure; demand and supply, fators influencing them, externalities, merit and demerit and public goods. Elasticity of semand and supply and factors affecting... cant think of much else...
Macro;
- Government macroeconomic policy objectives and how they are achieved:
- Inflation
- Growth
- Balance of Payments
- (Un)employment
Similar at A2 but more in depth and advanced, micro moves on to cover modelsof the firm operating in different market structures, efficiency and firms' objectives.