Around 30 students from Hatch End High School in Harrow were invited by the School of Hard Knocks, a charity that supports young people living in challenging circumstances, to an introduction to tax hosted by Ryan at London Zoo.

The introduction came with interactive games, quizzes, and motivational speeches.

The morning started with a quick quiz on tax to test the students’ tax knowledge.

Will Taylor, principal of business solutions at Ryan, kicked off the quiz by giving them certain scenarios, he said: ‘I am an owner of a zoo and I have a bill due for all the buildings in the zoo, what tax am I paying?’

Overlooking a few shouts of ‘animal tax’, and ‘zoo tax’, the right answer was finally reached with a shout of ‘property tax’ from Zion.

Perhaps showing off Ryan’s US connection, Zion, the student with the winning answer gallantly paraded around with his newly won Stanley Tumbler.

Taylor continued: ‘I go to the zoo shop, and I buy an ice cream… what tax do I pay?’

Shouts of ‘food tax’, ‘sugar tax’, and ‘ice cream tax’, were all given, until ‘VAT’ was reached by one student.

‘But what does VAT stand for’, asked Taylor.

‘Virtual Assistant Tax’, was first up, followed by ‘Virtual Added Tax’, and finally, ‘Value Added Tax’, shouted Tudor the winning student before collecting his new Wenger backpack.

After the quiz, Louise Keen, director of international operations at Ryan asked: ‘How do you all feel about AI, what do you use it for?’

‘Homework’ one student replied.

‘I wonder how your teacher feels about that’, joked Keen.

Taylor added: ‘AI is a clever robot trained on patterns… it’s only going to give you certain answers, you will be cleverer than AI’.

‘You need to use what it gives you and then interpret that in your own life… the phrase that people use a lot at Ryan is “human in the loop”, you are that human, take that information and put your own spin on it, that’s what we say at Ryan.’

Speaking after the tax talk, Taylor said: ‘We’ve worked with London Zoo before… last year we worked with them to help them in doing daily tasks around the Zoo, we mucked out some alpacas, replaced the straw for the pigs… following that we’ve worked with them again to help with the School of Hard Knocks charity’.

Keen said: ‘It’s important to reach a young audience because historically education, degrees, and universities have been the key story we’ve spun our children, I think now we are diversifying with the introduction of AI’.

‘I think it’s important to inspire and provide the young people of today with perspective’, Keen said.

On making tax interesting for a younger audience, Taylor said: ‘What I have found is you often get quite interesting people working in tax, I’m not sure why… and when you are working with interesting people, that makes it easier to talk more passionately about the industry you’re working within.’

Ben Farrar, maths teacher and senior leader at Hatch End High School said young people are increasingly interested in business and finance.

He said: ‘At school business is actually one of the most popular options at GCSE, I think that it’s because students see it as very relevant, they see it as a course that will give them a bigger, or more obvious skill set than more traditional subjects.’

Farrar, the maths teacher for over 10 years, said: ‘We learn a lot about interest, but it’s hard to teach that if there isn’t a fundamental understanding about tax… it needs to be drilled in at an earlier age’.

Tudor, a student from Hatch End High, and aspiring forensic detective said: ‘They taught us some life skills, how employees look for communication skills… they talked a lot about resilience, It was pretty good’.

Francesca Keynton from the School of Hard Knocks charity said: ‘Tax and finance are areas that all young people should be taught. Schools already have the challenging responsibility of helping students achieve strong academic results, so there is not always time to cover these vital life skills.

‘Through our work, we hear powerful stories about how financial hardship has affected our young people. Ensuring they are equipped to manage money, understand tax, and navigate real-life financial responsibilities can be truly life-changing’.

Pictured: Louise Keen and Will Taylor from Ryan tax with pupils from Hatch End High