As an insight into the concepts studied in Senior School economics, the students are taking part in the Financial Football World Cup – an engaging learning activity introduced by economics teacher Lloyd Haskett.

Mr Haskett said the web-based activity drew on the excitement of the World Cup to teach introductory economics and financial literacy skills. “The activity-based challenges, played in a competitive environment, provide immediate feedback and tremendous outcomes for the boys,” he said.

Students must answer questions on financial literacy topics, which then translate into passes and goals in a simulated match. The game is differentiated for student ability as each stage of the knockout phase becomes more difficult.

Mr Haskett said students prepared for the activity by selecting a country from World Cup participants and creating an economic profile. The class produced its own Economic Development Index, ranked the listed countries and debated the qualitative and quantitative measures of their index.

Blair Ward, who played for Scotland due to his family’s heritage, said: “it is a great activity because if you get the answer right - you get to keep going. If you get it wrong - you get to see the answer, so you still keep learning.” Tim Kong, who played for China due to his strong ties, said it was “fun to learn and enjoy yourself at the same time.”

Year 7 commerce students also took part in another innovative learning activity recently as part of the new, Year 7 humanities unit. The Year 7s, who are studying resources, participated in a trading day designed to help them understand the basis of the economic problem – unlimited wants and limited resources.

The games, created by humanities teacher Luke Watson, involved working in groups or ‘tribes’ to trade and barter for basic resources required for life and for luxury. In the first game, the tribes were given various commodities and objectives, time to strategise and then negotiate to gain the resources. In the second game, the boys were given a medium of exchange – money – in which individual players tried to gain necessities and the largest amount of wealth.

“It was a highly successful exercise. While it was a simulation, it gave the boys a real world appreciation of unlimited resources,” Mr Watson said. “The boys were learning, incidentally, about market forces through seeing how supply and demand operates.”