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Study guides → Entrepreneurship and Business Management N5
Entrepreneurship and Business Management N5: where the marks actually are
Managing a business rather than starting one — planning, organising, staffing, control and operations, built around revising and presenting a business plan.
N5 is being phased out. DHET is closing the NATED Report 191 programmes and replacing them with occupational qualifications. Its teach-out schedule (DHET TVET Circular TC 0134, 24 July 2025) gives the last national N5 examination for Business and Services Studies as Semester 1 2027. The last cohort gets a first sitting in Semester 2 2026 and one repeat semester — two chances, not the usual open-ended ones.
This is not a reason to stop. The National N Diploma can still be awarded up to 30 June 2029. Complete before 30 June 2026 and you receive the certificate exactly as now; after it, a DHET Statement of Results, which still counts toward the diploma. The Minister confirmed in June 2026 that qualifications already achieved stay valid and enrolled students should carry on.
Check your own dates with your college. The Department has since issued a revised circular, TC 0134(b), which it has not published, and further extensions were gazetted in June 2026 — so the date above is what DHET last put in writing publicly, not a promise about your intake.
What the exam is worth, module by module
These are DHET's own weight values. The syllabus states that a module's weight value gives the time to be spent teaching it and its share of the marks in the final exam — so this table is, in effect, the mark allocation of your paper. It totals 100.
| Module | Weight | |
|---|---|---|
| Specific management: Control | 18 | |
| Revising, presenting and evaluating the business plan | 15 | |
| Operations management | 15 | |
| Staffing one's business | 11 | |
| Introduction to management | 9 | |
| Organising the business | 9 | |
| Personal management | 8 | |
| Ethics and social responsibility | 8 | |
| The implementation of planning in the business plan | 7 |
How to spend your time
- Control is the single heaviest module at 18, and it is the one students most often treat as an afterthought because it comes last in the management cycle.
- The business plan modules — revising and presenting it, plus implementing planning — are 22 marks together. This subject is assessed on the plan, not on theory about plans.
- Recall is worth at most 10% of the paper. Everything else asks you to apply, analyse or evaluate, so memorising definitions is close to the worst way to prepare.
How you are assessed
Two things have to go right, and students lose the year on the first one more often than the second.
1. Your college (ICASS) mark
You need at least 40% to qualify to write the final exam at all.
2. The final examination
You pass at 40%.
- The paper is out of 200 marks in total. Section B (elective questions) is 150 of those marks and runs 2 hours 30 minutes.
- The syllabus sets cognitive levels as ranges rather than fixed marks: Recall 5–10%, Comprehension 30–40%, Application 30–40%, Analysis 15–35%, Synthesis 15–35%, Evaluation 15–30%. Recall is the smallest band by a wide margin.
Also doing N5 this trimester?
These are the other N5 subjects we have syllabus breakdowns for.
- Mathematics N5Integration techniques carries the most marks (24 of 100)
- Industrial Electronics N5Alternating Current Theory carries the most marks (15 of 100)
- Electrotechnics N5DC machines carries the most marks (20 of 100)
- Mechanotechnics N5Conveyor belts and belt drive calculations carries the most marks (20 of 100)
- Power Machines N5Thermodynamics carries the most marks (20 of 100)
- Fluid Mechanics N5Simple hydraulic systems carries the most marks (12 of 100)
- Strength of Materials and Structures N5Temperature-induced stresses carries the most marks (14 of 100)
- Computerised Financial Systems N5Financial reports (report writer) on an accounting package carries the most marks (20 of 100)
Source: DHET — Entrepreneurship and Business Management N5 Syllabus (Report 191, 2025–2026). Module names, weight values, admission requirements and assessment rules on this page are transcribed from that document. The study advice is ours.