Economics & Business Conference

Our first Economics and Business Conference inviting in other 6th form students from local schools and speakers from the Salopian network and further afield took place in October 2019. It is now an annual event.  

In our first edition talks were delivered on a range of topics including business ethics, the gender pay gap, and inequality and poverty in society. These were followed by a lively Question Time session.

Our Economics and Business students supported the event through the day and ensured that our guest speakers and pupils felt welcome.

Aims

Our aim is to establish a 'real world' understanding of Economics and Business for the personal development of sixth-form pupils studying these subjects. Also, we hope to improve their knowledge application in examination settings and hopefully generally enthuse them in these subjects.

We also aim to establish a link with the partner schools which can be strengthened by potential future projects.

Background

One of our Business and Economics teachers brought this conference idea forward as part of best practice. 

 

Resources

We employed our Salopian Club's and Futures' contacts to find speakers from a variety of backgrounds. In 2019 these were: five external speakers, including a former partner of PWC, a university lecturer in Business, a charity/ community speaker and other experts in their fields. In 2021, we have a keynote speech from CEO of the Foodbank+ followed by a student debate on whether markets can be trusted to eliminate poverty and inequality, leading to question time with the panellists including Nathaniel Green (Liberal Democrat, Julia Buckley (Labour) and Simon Richards (Business and Brexiteer) then concluding with a university student session. 

The conference was held in our recently refurbished Alington Hall. All students, staff and speakers spent the day at school.

The conference ran from 9am to 4.30pm and both the Business and Economics faculties hosted the occasion.

 

Impact

Feedback has been requested from visiting schools and our own students in order to refine and improve future events.

We hope that all students will be able to better apply their learning from the conference into the examination room and their potential links in business.

Pupil Involvement

Students were all 16-18 years old; some 240 attended.

Frequency

This is an annual conference.