Congratulations to The European School Karlsruhe, the winner of the CORE Schools Economics Challenge 2018, and especially to Ellen Gerisch (left) and Maria Assanbaev (right), who created the high-speed animation in the winning entry. The European School Karlsruhe will receive £1,500, and Maria and Ellen will share £500 Amazon vouchers.
In partnership with the Financial Times, we asked schools around the world to use The Economy and the FT’s site for secondary schools as a resource to create a three-minute video on the theme “Ten years on from the Global Financial Crisis”.
As you can see above, the winner literally sketches out the causes and consequences of the financial crisis, finding time to squeeze in a couple of jokes along the way. “It was quite a challenge, but we are very pleased with what we achieved,” Maria and Ellen told us, “It was difficult and took a lot of time to make, but looking back at the effort we put in and what has become of it, it makes us proud.”
Although they are based in Germany, they focused on the UK, “as it has been affected more than some other countries.”
The judges were pleased too, commenting that the video had “very high production quality” with a good use of humour, with “excellent style and good use of economic theory”, and was “continuously engaging”.
The European School Karlsruhe was established in 1962 as one of 13 schools set up for the children of the personnel of European Institutions. Today it offers an education to children whose parents come from all backgrounds, and from European and non-European countries, and has German, French and English sections. It offers a distinctive multilingual and multicultural education that helps its students study international events, says Angela Starost, who teaches Economics and Human Science.
“They study economics in English, but usually more than half their exams are in a foreign language. I can say to the students, can you follow the news in France? What are they saying about this in Venezuela? It makes for really good class discussions,” she says.
Ms Starost set the challenge to her students over the summer holiday, and was delighted by the quality of the work they submitted, and the initiative they showed. “We had five extremely good entries, and I felt sorry for the ones we couldn’t put into the competition. Some of our students interviewed a banker in Frankfurt, and they literally learned how to make a video by watching YouTube.”
She also recommends the competition to teachers as a way of interesting students in economics. “Our students study for the European Baccalaureate, and our final year students will be studying global topics like trade, inflation, and exchange rates. The competition has given them an excellent foundation because they are thinking about and understanding these things already.”
This year participating schools were each permitted to enter a collaborative entry with another local school. The winner of the collaboration prize of £1,500, plus £500 Amazon vouchers for students, was the team from The Charter School North Dulwich and Dulwich College. The judges praised the entry’s “great ambition” and “excellent variety of interviews”.
Congratulations also to Hills Grammar School, Sydney (video), and St Paul’s School, London (video) for their entries that placed second and third in the CORE Schools Economics Challenge 2018. Hills Grammar School wins £750, with £300 Amazon vouchers for students, and St Pauls wins £500 for the school and £200 in vouchers for students.
