O the 15th of May the students from our Business Class went to visit the Bank of England. One of the students, Arnuttikan has written an introduction where he explains the responsibilities of the Bank of England.
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom, which was established in 1694. It is the second largest bank in the world, while the oldest one is the Sveriges Riksbank, Bank of Sweden which was established in 1668. The Bank of England is not like a local high street bank. It has special functions to maintain a stable economy and financial system. The bank has 3 main roles. The first is to set interest rates to keep inflation at a certain level by following government policy. Another responsibility of the bank is to issue banknotes and coins with special security, as well as assessing the health of the financial system and working with other financial institutions to keep it stable.
Nowadays inflation in the United Kingdom is fairly low, but it used to be much higher. Inflation is a rise in costs and prices. The main responsibility of the bank is to control the annual rate of inflation target set by the government. One of several ways to control the rate of inflation is to set interest rates which encourages people to spend or save money.
Secondly, the bank has been issuing banknotes for over 300 years.
There are 4 types of banknotes; £5, £10, £20 and £50. Each note has its own design and contains a range of security features to protect it from illegal copies.
Finally, the bank has to supervise financial institutions across the United Kingdom in order to maintain a stable financial system. The bank assesses where potential weak points in the system are and reduces these weaknesses. The bank also sets rules and guidelines for financial institutions to maintain the stability of the financial system as a whole.
Arnuttikan Archavakhom, Thailand
We met at the school at 9.15 am. After correcting our homework we left school at 9.45 am. We went to the Bank of England by train and tube. We spent more than one hour in the museum, where we took a self-guided audio tour. There we had the possibility to touch a gold bar. It was also interesting to see how our predecessors worked and how much the prices for services or items have increased over the years. They had a lot of examples of inflation.
At 12.45 pm we went to a pub for lunch. We had an interesting chat about the history of England and English people in general. We compared the culture of the countries where the students in our class come from.
Next we walked along the river. Finally we had a cup of tea in a cafe. Every student had a chat for 15 minutes with the teacher about their future plans and goals. The aim of this discussion was to give our teacher an idea of what kind of exercises we want to do and in which area we want to improve our English.
We spent a lovely day together.
-The WSE Business class
