Money week magic!

1 October 2009

Pupils from New College School recently took part in a fundraising event in aid of the SpecialEffect charity. The pupils raised £142.20 by taking part in the first ever National 'My Money Week'. During the week the boys learnt about all aspects of finance, and a school bank was created with each boy opening their own account. Each housepoint awarded was converted into money. The total raised was matched by Barclays as part of their community investment programme, Barclays Money Skills.

Andrew Magnay, Director of Pastoral Care and Head of Science at New College School said: I was delighted to see the enthusiasm shown by all boys throughout the school during the week. Once they found out that their local bank was converting their pretend money to the real thing they were over the moon. They also worked especially hard to raise as much money as possible for such a worthwhile charity. I think we may have inspired a number of boys to enter the financial sector when they are older!

Paula Molyneux, Community Investment Manager, said “Barclays Money Skills is all about improving the financial capability of young people across the UK. We are delighted with that the pupils had the opportunity to learn about how money works and raise money for a local charity”

Nick Streeter from the charity SpecialEffect said, We would like to say a massive thank you to the pupils of New College School and Barclays for their support of SpecialEffect. The funds raised during money week will help support the creation of the SpecialEffect computer games suite at the Helen and Douglas House Hospice in Oxford, which will be the world's first fully accessible computer games suite including an eye control machine that will help young people too disabled to operate a joystick or keyboard to play computer games with their eyes alone.