A group of Cirencester Sixth Form College A-level Economics students took part in the annual heats of the national Target 2.0 competition in Clifton, Bristol.

Target Two Point Zero - The Bank of England and The Times Interest Rate Challenge gives teams of students aged 16-18 the chance to take on the role of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, assess economic conditions and the outlook for inflation and tell panels of judges what monetary policy they would set to achieve the Government's inflation target of 2.0%.

With sixteen of the colleges finest Economists signing up to be part of the experience, it was hard to choose the four who would become the presenters and face the formidable panel of judges from the Bank of England.

Tom Millin, Georgia Bryant and Rhys Hopkins made up three of the team with Filip Georgiev heading up as captain.

This is always a very tough competition and this year was no different. In an economic climate of uncertainty in the global markets and a record low on our own base rate of interest with no sign of movement forecast in the short run the team had to be creative in coming up with solutions to the main question of the day - how to get the UK inflation rate to its target rate of 2%.

The team spent a long time looking at all the variables and formulating their ideas.

Ultimately they agreed with the policy of keeping the base rate of interest at 0.5% but recommended some other initiatives to try to shore up confidence in the economy, including a focus on exports after looking at the UKTI campaign of Exporting is Great and seeing how this could help with positive inflationary pressures. Ultimately they were beaten on the day, however the Cirencester College team were highly commended for their research into the Exporting is Great area and gave one of the most polished presentations of the day.

Economics Lecturer Hannah Clark said, “The team were a true credit to the college, as ever our students gave it their best and came away with their heads held high.”

Team captain Filip said "this has been an excellent competition to be part of. It helped us all improve our understanding of monetary policy and allowed us to look at areas we hadn't covered in class. As a keen economist it was good to be able to put my wider reading into this and I gained a lot of confidence from leading and presenting."