Sixth Form team takes third prize in global Economics competition

A QE team has taken third place in the Economics World Cup – a prestigious competition headed by an Oxford economist.

The team, now in Year 13, impressed the competition jury, emerging among the front-runners from a record number of entries in 2025.

The QE participants also took the opportunity to join a virtual roundtable with competition organiser Dr Craig Holmes, Economist and Senior Academic Fellow at the University of Oxford.

Dr Holmes shared what it is like to work in Economics and – as someone involved with admissions to Oxford – also gave an insider’s perspective on applying to top universities.

Afterwards, Dr Holmes told his colleagues that he had been very impressed at the calibre of questions asked by the QE boys during the roundtable.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My congratulations go to these six students on their top-three placing in the competition, which made them the leading UK team.”

The successful QE team comprised Nayaenesh Jayabalan, Yash Kedia, Aryan Kheterpal, Adithya Raghuraman, Samrath Sareen and Vid Shankar. Their team name was Market Failures.

Open to pupils aged 12–18, the Economics World Cup is a global competition designed to test entrants’ ability to think like an economist, rather than their knowledge of economics.

The competition is for teams. but Round 1 was an online test taken individually, with 30 multiple-choice questions. If anyone in a team scored in the top 15% of competitors, the entire team then qualified for the finals.

The second and final round was a team round. Each team was charged with devising a solution for a real development project within a week. They could submit their solution as a: video up to five minutes long; report of up to 1,000 words; presentation with a maximum of 1,000 words; or a podcast lasting no more than ten minutes.

These solutions were then reviewed by a competition jury overseen by Dr Holmes.

First and second places in this year’s competition went to schools in Bucharest, Romania, and Georgia, USA, respectively.