A team of students is through to the finals of a competition managing the country's finances.

The students at Brighton College all entered the South-East area final of the Bank of England's Target 2.5 competition.

The challenge was to be the bank's monetary policy committee and set the nation's interest rate.

Lana Khabarova, Helen Tsymbalova, Nigel Best and James Davids had to act as the bank would, looking at growth forecasts, exchange rates, investment, consumer spending and the myriad key economic indicators before setting the rate.

In the end, the team recommended raising rates by a quarter of one per cent.

Before a Bank of England panel, teams gave a 15-minute presentation to summarise their assessment of the economy and their recommendations on the rates.

The head and deputy head of the bank's South-East region then grilled the team for a further ten minutes.

Joe Carr-Hill, head of economics and politics at the college, said: "We go to the penultimate final in February next year but the team will revisit its recommendations before then.

"Apparently, we were the only winning school in the country so far to recommend a rate rise so maybe that has marked us out but, more importantly, the team handled itself brilliantly in the questioning session. It was quite a grilling."