Target Two Point Zero Triumph!

Published on isbi School News dated Monday 2nd of December 2013

A team of 9 Oundle pupils won the Regional Heats in the recent Target Two Point Zero Bank of England and Times Interest Rate Challenge. The pupils now go through to the Area Finals which take place in February 2014.
Captain Oliver Wood (17), Juliette Aliker (17), Freddie Martin (18) and Malayandi Palaniappan (18) presented their findings ably supported with research from Stanley Billington (17), Danial Bistamam (18), Alexandra Hodgson (17), Andrew Ginns (17) and Matthew Law (18).

Teams had to act as the real Monetary Policy Committee would and undertake economic research and analysis by examining current economic conditions, and assessing the outlook for the economy and inflation. They then had to present their findings to a panel of judges in competition with other schools in the area and make a monetary policy recommendation with supporting arguments and evidence to achieve the Government's inflation target of 2.0%.

Oliver commented, 'In our presentation we proposed to keep the bank rate at 0.5% and maintain the stock of QE asset purchases at £375, due to the fragile recovery in the UK and falling real wages.

It felt amazing to win as we had been working on the presentation for several months, with a very hectic couple of days before updating all of the data and statistics on the slides. It has given all of the team a much greater understanding of the current state of the UK economy and will definitely help us in our A-level studies.'


Head of Economics, Mo Tanweer commented, 'The Oundle team of pupils presented very strongly and answered the panel's questions excellently. They should be rightly proud of their achievement.'

The Area Finals will take place in February 2014.