Townends, Mark Knowlson, recently attended the ICAEW BASE 2014 heat held at Hull University on 19 March as mentor to the team of students from East Riding College.
Here is Mark’s summary of the day and some photographs:
“There were fourteen teams of students aged 16-19 from various schools and colleges taking part in the ICAEW BASE competition for the Hull region. The day consisted of 3 tasks for the students, working in teams on an ICAEW exam style scenario and ended with a presentation of their findings and recommendations to a panel of judges made up of senior business leaders and professionals representing the ICAEW. Each team was mentored by a qualified or student ICAEW member, I mentored the East Riding College team.
The teams spent over 3 hours working on the tasks of analysing figures, performance, business strategies and ethical issues and preparing their presentations, which included the very realistic fact of having to work through lunch! At the end of this there was an employer exhibition where students could visit stands for brochures and information on careers in accountancy and ask recruitment questions to representatives of the accountancy firms on display. Before the end of the day four teams were selected as finalists to give their presentations on stage to the audience of other teams, their teachers and mentors.
East Riding College did extremely well and made it into the final four but unfortunately just missed out on winning a place in the national competition to be held in Birmingham later this year.”