The Department of Economics

TheEconomics department has had another busy and successful year. In September we welcomed William Haines as a full time teacher of Economics. He has made a fantastic contribution to both the delivery of the curriculum and extra curricula work of the department. In terms of results the department achieved an exemplary set of A level results with 98% of students achieving grades A*to B. The depth of these results can be shown by 52% of students achieving A* at A level. At AS level 95.7% of students achieved grades A to B. The department has also been involved in a number extra curricula activities throughout the year.

John Greenwood S___Head of Economics

The Political Economy Society

The Political Economy Society had undoubtedly one of its most succesful years to date, with a number of fascinating presentations from both external and internal speakers. To begin the year, the society welcomed Roy Cromb, a former employee at the Bank of England, to present on the current economic situation of the UK. Mr Cromb spoke with great scepticism over the recent boom in the housing market and the inflated growth figures given that real wages still remain worringly low in comparison.

Chris Giles, Economics Editor of the Financial Times, continued this theme with his own prediction on how the UK economy would look by the end of 2014. Having recently arrived back from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Giles was able to give an accurate account of the current optimism that surrounded the UK economy and how the outlook looked very different to what economists had predicted only a year ago.

Our focus at the society then moved away from domestic economic issues and towards the international economy as Professor Alfredo Saad Filho from the University of SOAS discussed the rise of the emerging markets and whether they would continue to grow at such a fast rate over the coming decade.

Andrew Lilico, Chairman of Europe Economics, was the next guest speaker that the society were fortunate to host as he discussed austerity in the UK economy. Dr Lilico argued that austerity measures should have been implemented much earlier, with the current scheme more reactive than proactive. Despite evidence of some partial success, he challenged some of the coalition’s spending cuts through targeting the wrong areas of the government budget.

In the Spring term, Thomas Wardle, a Lead Research from The Centre for Social Justice, was welcomed to the society. His talk, titled ‘Reforming Welfare, Transforming Lives’, highlighted the importance for the government of understanding the broad nature of poverty in the UK. From his own research, he showed clear evidence that despite the increased spending on welfare over the last ten years, the number of people on out-of-work benefits has in fact hardly fallen.

Our final external speaker of the year was Jo Johnson, Member of Parliament for Orpington and Chair of the Prime Minister’s Policy Board. Mr Johnson gave an insider view on the Budget Report and held discussion on other topical issues. Students asked some probing questions on the Economics Conference

On Monday 3rd December Year 13 Economists attended a conference in London to enjoy a range of presentations by Ed Balls MP (Shadow Chancellor), Hugh Pym (Economics Editor, BBC), Tim Harford (Author of ‘The Undercover Economist’, BBC and the FT) and various economists.

Bank of England - Target 2.0

On the 26th February the Saint Olave’s Monetary Policy committee represented the school in the Area final. The competition involves the students analysing Economic data and making a recommendation as to what the Bank of England should do to achieve the inflation target of

2%. The team opted to incentive banks to encourage more lending in the economy. The team unfortunately did not win through to the national final but they would like to thank everyone for helping to fill in their surveys.

Work Related Learning & Enterprise Days

As part of their work related learning, Year 10 visited the Bank of England including a talk giving valuable insight into why it is essential to manage inflation in the economy and what constitutes economic stability. The day also included a business game which all enjoyed.

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