Buy My Duck is back for 2008!$14,000 up for grabs for WA schools.
Issue Date: - Monday, 23 June 2008
With buying power estimated at over $10 billion dollars a year, today's young kids and
teens are clearly in training to become the consumers of the future.
Many however are unaware of their legal rights. With so many buy now pay later offers
available a lot of young people can have difficulty managing credit and debit as well as
being vulnerable to rip offs and scams.
To ensure young consumers are informed and educated about their rights and
responsibilities, Consumer Protection is pleased to once again invite school students from
year three to 12 to participate in a schools-based education program called Buy My Duck.
The competition will run from July 22 to September 19 2008 and participating students and
schools can enter projects to win money for themselves and their school.
The Buy My Duck competition requires students from regional (including Indian Ocean
Territories) and metropolitan schools to research and develop a Survival Guide to
Shopping. In this way the topics for the competition are drawn from the students
themselves, making the resulting guides very powerful educational tools for the whole
class.
Winning entries will be published on the competition website in November.
The prize pool for the 2008 competition is $14,000, including $2,000 for each of the three
categories and $250 for each of the three-individual/group categories, and a $250 teacher
incentive award.
Most adults are discerning consumers and know when they are getting a good deal when
purchasing a product. Younger consumers, however, need guidance.
We know for instance that 45% of young people cannot understand mobile phone costs in a contracts fine print,
while 30% of young consumers are unable to calculate the best value of a given product
while shopping. These are real issues young consumers face on a daily basis, and the Buy
My Duck competition is one way to assist these youngsters make informed decision and choices,
the Commissioner for Consumer Protection Anne Driscoll said.
"In putting together their submission, students will develop valuable literacy, numeracy and
IT skills and enhance their verbal communication and project planning skills, amongst
others. The end result, we are confident, will show students to be better informed of their
rights and responsibilities as consumers."
"Students can submit work in a variety of formats such as multimedia presentations or even
submit a comic book or brochure. The fact that students are working with their peers as a
target group means we can expect to see some really meaningful and
relevant submissions."
Classroom activities for the Buy My Duck competition are linked to the National Curriculum
(Statements of Learning) and WA Learning Outcomes, and allow primary teachers to
deliver integrated activities across the curriculum. There are a range of resources available
for download on Consumer Protection's website for maths, English and commerce high school teachers.
Teachers, student and parents can gain a wealth of valuable knowledge from a special
page on Consumer Protection's website created just for the Buy My Duck competition.
The page can be accessed at www.docep.wa.gov.au/buymyduck.
There is an online application form and several submissions from last year that we hope
will stimulate and inspire young consumers about how they can best inform and educate themselves and their peers.