BEd(BAFS) students join public competitions to polish their knowledge

The Bachelor of Education (Honours) (Business, Accounting and Financial Studies) programme (BEd(BAFS)) offered by the Department of Social Sciences (SSC) aims to equip students with the essential knowledge and skills to teach the BAFS curriculum in secondary schools. To put theory into practice, we encourage students to join public competitions to polish their knowledge and sharpen their skills.

Five fourth-year students from the Bachelor of Education (Honours) (Business, Accounting and Financial Studies) programme (BEd(BAFS))—Chu Lai-hang, Lo Wing-kong, Ma King-lok, Ng Hok-yu and Yung Sing-yu—formed the team “Startupper” to participate in the Marco Business Simulation ECase Competition 2021 held between March and June. Organised by Icetech HK Ltd, the competition attracted around 30 teams from 11 Hong Kong tertiary institutes and more than 20 teams from universities in China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Participants were required to use the business simulation platform to address and analyse different scenarios qualitatively and quantitatively, in order to achieve optimal financial performance for their companies. All teams joined six rounds of training workshops and simulation games in March and April before taking part in the final competition in June.

Despite the keen competition from both Hong Kong and overseas teams, Startupper managed to enter the Grand Final. Startupper prepared a presentation extemporaneously to illustrate their business strategies and decisions in front of a panel of honorable judges from academic and industrial sectors. The team ranked fifth among all participating teams, and second among all Hong Kong teams.

Startupper is grateful that the competition provided a virtual dynamic business environment for them to polish their decision-making skills, cooperative skills and financial literacy. They believe these skills will sharpen their competitive edge and will be conducive to their future teaching, and said: “We would like to express our gratitude to our supervisor, Dr Vincent Cheng Wan-suen, for providing us with lots of support and guidance. We would also like to thank Icetech HK Ltd for organising such an extraordinary competition for business students.”

Four fourth-year students from the BEd(BAFS) programme—Chu Lai-hang, Rachel Lau, Ng Hok-yu, Ng Kei-ying—formed a team to join the TIHK Online Tax Competition (粵港澳大灣區大專生綫上稅務爭霸戰) held from April to June 2021 by The Taxation Institute of Hong Kong (TIHK). Participants from eight universities in the Greater Bay Area, including Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau, joined the competition. They carried out deep discussions on selected taxation topics at the competition.

The BEd(BAFS) team attended two workshops and the competition preliminaries held in June. In the preliminary session, the team was tasked with discussing “transfer pricing”, which was a new concept to them. To complete the task, team members needed to set the research question, do a literature review, and conclude the findings of their research. The Taxation Institute of Hong Kong (TIHK) gave the team permission to use Wkinfo’s online platform for carrying out their analysis.

Although the BEd(BAFS) team did not advance to the final competition and placed seventh overall, they gained a great deal of knowledge on solving taxation problems from the experience. Ng Kei-ying, leader of the team, said, “The competition was definitely an eye-opening experience for students of taxation studies. We are very grateful to Dr Vincent Cheng Wan-suen for accompanying us most of the time during the whole competition and for giving us useful guidance to finish our tasks at the competition. We would also like to thank TIHK for providing us the valuable opportunity to learn.”