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Target 2.0

Target Two Point Zero - The Bank of England and The Times Interest Rate Challenge gives teams of students aged 16-18 the chance to take on the role of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, assess economic conditions and the outlook for inflation and tell panels of judges what monetary policy they would set to achieve the Government's inflation target of 2.0%.  Here, Year 13 student Anna tells us about her experience.

Target 2.0 is a national competition run by the Bank of England that gives teams of students a chance to decide what they would do about monetary policy.  That is interest rates and quantitive easing. 

We were a team of sixteen people who together came up with a presentation to put forward at the regional heats on the 26th of November.  We worked on it every Wednesday afternoon as part of our curricular enrichment, to do the research and complete the presentation. 

The people who went to the regional heats consisted of the four main speakers and a reserve speaker.  We arrived early enough to partake in the free lunch (!), and afterwards the team delivered their presentation.  Following this, they were then asked a series of extremely challenging questions which they answered with confidence. 

We watched two more teams present out of the total six and stayed until they announced the winner.  Unfortunately it wasn't us this time, and was in fact our nearest grammar school rival!

But that didn't matter, the experience was a rewarding one that taught us all much more about monetary policy than will be covered by the A level specification.  We gained valuable research and presenting skills that we can use both in our other subjets and also in the future.  It was a fascinating day and we are grateful to Mr Mahony for his support.  

The team presenting to the panel