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YFJ-banner-2019 — Student Zone
Young Financial Journalist 2021/22

The competition is now closed for this year.

This competition helps young people show off their writing skills and financial know-how. Our Young Financial Journalist competition, is run in partnership with the Financial Times’ (FT) free schools programme and its Financial Literary and Inclusion Campaign.

About the competition

The competition ran from 3 December 2021 to 7 April 2022 and is now closed.

Entries are now being judged by a panel of judges, including FT consumer editor Claer Barrett, and mathematician, writer and teacher Bobby Seagull. The winners will be announced later in July 2022.

The London Institute of Banking & Finance (LIBF), the Financial Times’ (FT) free schools programme and its Financial Literary and Inclusion Campaign are seeking well-argued articles from students aged 14–19 for this joint competition. Winning entries will be published on this website and may also be published on FT.com and/or in an edition of FT Money. The winner of each age group will also receive a £150 cash prize.

Schools teaching 16-19 year olds can get free access to FT.com. Get your free subscription to the Financial Times

Find out more about our Financial Education courses

About our judges

Claer Barrett is an award-winning journalist who is the consumer editor of the FT. She writes the weekly Serious Money column and presents the FT's Money Clinic podcast and Business Clinic video series.

Bobby Seagull is a mathematician, teacher and writer. He appeared on University Challenge (BBC2) in 2017, and in 2018 on Monkman & Seagull’s Genius Guide to Britain. His first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers, was published in 2019. He is a regular commentator on financial education and money matters.

Catherine Winter is Managing Director, Financial Education and Community Outreach at The London Institute of Banking & Finance. Following a career in communications, she was a teacher of economics for six years and is now responsible for our work with schools, in adult education and wider community outreach projects.

How to enter

To enter, write an article based on ONE of the questions in your age group. Submit your entry using the form provided on our website, by the closing date (7 April 2022).

Answer one of the questions in your age group and upload your entry using the form provided.
Make sure you have written a minimum of 700 words, but no more than 800 words (not including headings, references and any entrant information).
Please make sure you fill out all the boxes on the form, including your name, age, gender, school, UK region and contact details.

Top tips

The judges are looking for:

submissions with a clear narrative, which answer the question being tackled
an engaging and ‘journalistic’ style – short sentences which make clear points
a minimum of 700 words but not exceeding 800 words, excluding headings, references and entrant details
original ideas, but with evidence of research /further reading. (Sources of information must be referenced)
good spelling and grammar.

Competition rules

The competition is open to young people aged between 14-19, attending school in the UK.
Entries must be a minimum of 700 words and no more than 800 words, excluding headings and entrant information. You must answer one of the questions in your age group.
Entries must be made via our website www.libf.ac.uk by close of business (17:00) on Thursday 7 April 2022, using the entry form provided.
Entries must specify the student’s name, age, gender, school, UK region and name of teacher.
Entries should be typewritten and submitted in a word document format (MSWord or similar word processing package).
Entries will be disqualified if they:
a. Don’t comply with the entry requirements, including minimum or maximum word count.
b. Contain excessive spelling, punctuation or grammatical mistakes, judged at our discretion.
c. Save their entry in a format that can’t be opened with standard packages such as MS Word.
Articles will be checked for plagiarism.
Late entries will not be accepted.