While the past year may have been a difficult one for many businesses it has been an exciting one for students of Economics and Business Studies. Almost every day it seemed possible to open a newspaper and read about events unfolding in the world outside the walls of EIC. These showed the application of the theories we have been studying, from last summer with the collapse of some airlines (demonstrating the importance of cash flow) to the G20 meetings, showing the importance of an internationally coordinated fiscal stimulus package. What has been a real pleasure is to see some of the students, particularly the Year 13s, showing a real understanding of the causes and possible consequences of the news items they witnessed.
As I noted last year, 2008 was the first time we had Economics at A level and I am pleased to say that the AS results were truly excellent, with over half the students achieving an A grade and I hope their performance here was a factor in helping these students to gain offers from the UK’s top universities. These results were complemented with some outstanding results from the Business Studies students. This year we will see the Economics A level being completed and my fingers are crossed for all the A2, AS and GCSE Business Studies and Economics students.
 Outside the classroom we have tried to widen the students’ understanding by giving them a taste of some real business/economic activities. Once again we entered the Daily Telegraph “Shares4schools” competition, where the students form a team with £1500 to invest in the UK stock market. As you can imagine it has been a difficult year to be trading, but the overall performance was excellent. We are, as I write, currently in an outstanding 3rd place in the UK national league, well ahead of the other international schools and world famous UK schools, such as Eton. Our fund is now worth £2355, a profit of 57%, this in a time period when the FTSE 100 has fallen by 34%, is a brilliant return. For the record, the students focused mainly on financial stocks in late 2007, hoping that these were vastly undervalued at the time. Many of these paid off with RBS giving a 60% return and HBOS a smaller profit. However, a few continued to fall, we had big loses from shares in Cattles, Man Group and Lloyds TSB (which rose soon after we sold!). Some investments were in mining companies, with losses from Kazakhmys slightly outweighing gains from Rio Tinto. All this left the group more or less breaking even, but then a last minute purchase of Millwall Holdings saw a massive percentage increase, from 0.022p to 0.07p and a huge profit. With only a few weeks to go, we actually topped the league table for a brief time, before falling back slightly. All in all congratulations to the whole group, especially Archie, who led the way in many of the buying options.
In addition to the league there was also a monthly competition where the students had to answer some questions on the workings of the Stock Exchange to win a £250 prize. The questions ranged from trivia, such as the opening hours of the exchange on the 31st December to current affairs questions, such as the current US Fed interest rate. This was followed by a tie-breaker, usually asking for a prediction of the price of a share, or value of an index. We were successful in winning the February competition.
Next year we will extend the share dealing to the entire school, with a fantasy game based on real share prices, but with each player beginning with a fantasy pot of £100 000. The details are on the Business page of the school’s “moodle” website.
In order to help the students gain a better understanding of investing Mr Griffin was again able to arrange a visit from Bob Hamilton, a hugely successful investor, to come in and give some insight. This year he focused on the causes of the credit crunch, with a clever explanation of the problems based around “pies” of bundled debt.
Further down the school in Year 10 the now familiar International Schools Careers Organisation (ISCO) visited and ran their one-day “The Apprentice” style team exercise. This year we moved away from the restaurant theme to look at fund raising events, each group picking a charity to raise money for and planning a day’s fund raising activities.
We also saw a new look “Humanities Day”, with the focus on individuals who have made a difference to society. The business students from Year 10 tried to emulate successful entrepreneurs, with a “Dragon’s Den” presentation to a group of Dragons from Year 13, as well as a Key Stage 3 audience. There were a number of interesting ideas on show, from storage space under steps to combined popcorn and drink holders for cinemas. All the budding entrepreneurs did themselves proud, with a better grasp of figures than is often seen on the TV show and fielding some searching questions from the audience.
Nick Edwards |
