Business education students from the Swift Current Comprehensive High School went head to head in a case competition to earn a spot a provincials next month.

The competition happened Monday night at the Innovation Credit Union and saw five teams totalling 15 students given three hours and a scenario to go through it and analyze. The teams had to come up with some alternatives and a financial plan for the person in the scenario and then present it to the judges. The two top teams would then be selected by the judges and punch their ticket to the Saskatchewan Business Teachers Association (SBTA) High School Business Case Competition.

Cindy Lowe is the Business Education, Skills & Apprenticeship Teacher at the Swift Current Comprehensive High School and said that the kids did a great job.

"We had two experience groups present and the other three groups were new, and they did amazing," she said. "We had done some practice, some preparation but there's nothing like stepping into an actual environment where you do it.

Some of our new teams did really well and really made it tough to pick who we were going to take provincially because those kids did so well."

Despite all the teams going great, there had to be winners. The Entrepreneurship team made up of Grade 12 students Harshini Arumugam, Megan DeJager, and Abby Degala, and the Finance team made up of Grade 12 student Anthony Merkel and Grade 11 students Eljay Duncga, and Michael Orthner will both be advancing to provincials come May 4 in Saskatoon. 

Lowe said that for those who didn't win it was a great learning experience.

"Once they get that first one under the belt they realize that they can do it, and coming up with one in a three-hour time frame is kind of tight for them to work through."

Lowe said that since they don't have long to complete their presentation, it teaches them other skills like time management. 

"They have to deconstruct the case, work on out a powerpoint, do some number crunching and work on a presentation and practice the presentation," she said. "Time management is a big skill that the kids develop because they have to really work hard and get it all done. Then allocating jobs for the team members, so one person might be on the computer, the other person might be pulling out data from the case, we might have a third one on a second computer on an excel spreadsheet running numbers and budgets. They really have to work efficiently as a team and manage their time."

Lowe said that practising and competing in these case competitions isn't all about winning but also about learning an important life skill on how to manage finances.

"Kids need to know this information and do financial planning themselves and understand financial products, and retirement planning and that information is so important," she said. "The kids really like doing it and are interested in their own personal financial situations. They're doing financial planning for the client and case. So they're being financial planners already so when they start to think of their own situations they'll be ahead of the game."

Lowe added that what the students are learning is real-life advice that everyone should be thinking about once they get a job.