Westbrook Hay, Hemel Hempstead
Runner up, 2009
School award for most innovative approach to PFE
To help raise awareness of and create a buzz around personal finance among students, Peter Makower, a teacher at Westbrook Hay School created an online stocks and shares scheme and accompanying teaching resources, and encouraged 12 other schools to compete. The scheme enables students to get a better feel for the real-time gains and losses of their virtual investments through discussion groups in school and at home, researching their investments and competing against other schools. The scheme also generated national press coverage.
How does it work?
Each child is given a virtual £1,000 to spend on five shares. These are entered on the ADVFN website (the largest website for stocks and shares in Europe). For a three week period the students can follow their shares through live feeds.
Multiple schools can play simultaneously with prizes for:
- The students whose portfolio has gained most on any day ( £10 voucher)
- The school whose average portfolio has performed best (£300)
- The student who performs best at any school ( £10 voucher)
- Overall winner ( £10)
The scheme can be seen at: www.advfn.com/p.php?pid=schcomp.
Peter Makower was also a runner up in the Teacher award category for his contribution to this scheme.
The judges were impressed by the involvement of external agencies, who sponsored the scheme, the involvement of other schools and by the high level of student engagement.
