Business Students Save the Day

Four Business Studies students from St Wilfrid's visited PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP(PwC) last week in order to apply their business talents to the rescue of a struggling textile company.

Ezile Nomkuca, Elsa Sudan, Mark Rivers and Yusra Malik had won Year 12's Business & Enterprise Day held in December, facilitated by PwC together with businessdynamics. The aim of the day had been to build a prototype roller coaster and pitch for a contract at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, an exercise which required close teamwork, extensive research, financial acumen and skilful marketing. The prize was a visit to PwC offices at Gatwick to take part in a computer simulation game based on a company's business and financial recovery. This game is used by companies such as banks and insurance companies for staff training, so the students expected to find it both challenging and instructive - as was indeed the case!

The simulation was structured around a textile company in financial difficulties which went by the somewhat discouraging name of Disaster Looms. Ezile, Elsa, Mark and Yusra were pleased to find that many of the topics recently covered in their school curriculum were particularly appropriate to the simulation. They were able to apply recently-acquired business knowledge of sources of finance and liquidity to Disaster Looms' situation; their broad understanding of the issues surrounding liquidity enabled them to make astute management choices. Despite this, the company's name proved to be unfortunately apt and the students were unable to save it, mainly due to time constraints. The game ended with the bank deciding to foreclose the business.

The students were accompanied by Head of Business Studies Mrs Carter and Head of Specialism Mrs Waddingham, who were delighted both with the firm's input and the students' performance. "The group really benefited from this chance to apply their classroom knowledge to a real-life situation and from their discussions with Mark Andrews, of PwC" remarked Mrs Carter with satisfaction. "The simulation game will have greatly reinforced their curriculum studies and given them a real boost towards gaining the best exam marks possible. Furthermore, they will bring this experience back to school with them and be able to enrich their peers' studies too."

Mrs Waddingham agreed. "This type of school-business collaboration is what our Business & Enterprise with Ethics specialism is all about. The importance of relevant work-related learning opportunities provided by local companies cannot be overestimated; we continually see the results in our students' academic success and their increased motivation. We would like to give a big vote of thanks to the staff at PwC for giving of their time and expertise to our students today."

"One last word," added Mrs Carter. "Our students really weren't far from providing 'a stitch in time' to Disaster Looms. They very nearly turned things around and performed very creditably indeed in a difficult situation. Well done!"