Take a look at the MoneySense Apprentice Challenge finalists’ fantastic films

Six students from Withington Girls’ School in Manchester (pictured) carried off the £3,000 prize in this year’s Apprentice Challenge from Financial Mail, sponsored by Royal Bank of Scotland’s MoneySense educational programme earlier this month.

The team, calling themselves Money Minded, triumphed in a nationwide contest to devise and market a game to make teaching personal finance fun.

Withington’s game beat three other impressive shortlisted entries in front of an audience of 350 students and teachers at the climax of Financial Mail’s Breaking the Mould conference on Monday March, in Park Lane, central London.

The Money Minded team, aged 16 to 17, faced a grilling from the stars of BBC TV’s The Apprentice – Margaret Mountford (Lord Alan Sugar’s right-hand woman), Saira Khan and Tim Campbell – in the ‘boardroom’ before going on to win the £3,000 for their school.

The runner-up teams, from The Cherwell School, in Oxford (team iFloos pictured left), Plymouth College (team Game Girls) and King’s High, Warwick (team Financeville), each collected cheques for £1,000.

Money Minded team members Jayana Patel, Elise Varley, Alex Davis, Nicole Jesse, Gabby Westington and Shruti Chaudhary designed and produced a board game for up to six players that they estimated would cost £7 to make, but would sell for £14.

Up to six players can travel around the brain-shaped board using brain-shaped counters. They must answer multiple choice questions, true or false questions, solve anagrams or provide longer answers under time pressure, while attempting to reach the end of the board to become the winner.

The personal finance questions for the game were printed on the back of cards designed to look like credit and debit cards, with different colours representing levels of difficulty.

The team impressed the judges with their enthusiasm for learning about financial products such as current accounts, interest rates, mortgages and pensions.

Personal finance lessons will become compulsory in schools from next year. According to the Personal Finance Education Group half of teenagers have been in debt by the age of 17.

A spokeswoman for MoneySense, which works with 60 per cent of secondary schools, said RBS was thrilled to support a competition that encouraged and empowered young people to think for themselves about how they would like to deliver financial education in an innovative way.

The winners, team Money Minded (Withington Girls School, Manchester):

Team Game Girls (Plymouth College):

Team iFloos (pupils of The Cherwell School, Oxford):

Team Financeville (King’s High, Warwick):

For more clips from Breaking the Mould 2010, go to www.youtube.com/fmwfvideos.

Posted by Vicki Owen on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 6:27 pm.

Filed under Breaking the Mould, Careers, Events, News, Parenting, Personal Finance, SMEs, Students, Tagged as: .