BSE Institute introduces financial markets sessions among school students across the country
Mumbai: Bombay Stock Exchange Institute Ltd (BIL), the leader in financial education, introduces financial markets sessions among school students across the country. It kick started the initiative with a live mock stock session at Dr Rajendra Prasad government school at the Rashtrapati Bhavan estate, New Delhi. 60 students aged around 12 years participated in the activity of mock stock trading.
This unique program has been developed by BIL to teach young students the basic concepts of trading, buying and selling of shares, listing etc. The program uses a game based learning approach to help the students learn the world of financial markets and especially how the stock exchanges work. As a part of the program, students were asked to bid and build their own teams in IPL style. This involved participating in strategy sessions and back-room negotiations to select the best team for themselves followed by mock trading of players whose prices were moving up or down based on how they were faring in the various matches being played. The actual cricket matches were also simulated in class with the students forming IPL teams and playing hand cricket in the classroom,
Speaking on the occasion Mr. Ambarish Datta, MD & CEO – BSE Institute said, “the current generation of school children are exposed to multiple media simultaneously. While watching TV, they are chatting with friends on WhatsApp, and listening to music. This has resulted in extremely short attention spans. I feel that this has made traditional learning methods less effective. A game based approach is more effective because it can sustain interest and attention in settings where the learner is likely to get bored. Which is why we decided to teach the working of a stock market using an IPL auction scenario.”
Game based learning allowed students to learn while having fun and at the same time balance subject matter. Teachers loved the approach since it allowed them to embed activities to keep students engaged and make the entire process of learning interesting.
BIL is offering such sessions to school students across India to make them aware of the financial markets and its operations.