Are you a horsey person? Perhaps I'd better rephrase that - do you enjoy horse riding? Even if you don't, I'll be very surprised if there are not several enthusiasts among your pupils, or maybe you're a parent whose daughter is pestering you to buy a pony. Perhaps you'll be doing all parties a favour if you use this small business simulation first!

In the program, small groups - intended for children aged nine and upwards - set up their own riding school. "The program provides and monitors a basic framework of income/expenditure calculations and related decision-making... it is intended ideally to be run over a period of several weeks to involve the children in record-keeping and to enable them to perceive the cumulative effect of their chosen strategies. It can provide a mathematical component to a larger, integrated project on horses, expanded to an extent determined by the children's interest and the teacher's professional judgement."

The package consists of the program disc, teachers' notes, four copies of a Management Guide and a pad of timetables. The Teachers' Notes give a detailed run through of the program, including information on ways of adjusting the variables related to the costs in order to keep pace with inflation and reflect the regional and/or seasonal price differences. The Management Guide is intended for the "Riding School Owners" and contains a plan of the proposed site, advertisements of horses and tack for sale, lists of children and adult customers likely to come to the school and more general information that might be helpful. "The children should read through the guide before beginning work at the computer and the teacher should encourage discussion about it." Likewise, throughout the program, much of the work is undertaken away from the keyboard in a fairly typical Holmes/Whittington style.

The Teacher's Page permits the setting up of the initial information for each group in turn - up to ten groups can use the program - and when the group has been given a number, its initial bank balance is requested - maximum £9,999. Other options available from the teacher's page include seeing the situation of any group participating in the project and changing the preset monetary valaues as mentioned earlier.

The first group begins business by buying horses and suitable tack, calculating the cost of feed and bedding (do take care not to confuse cost per day with cost per week), rent of stable buildings and land, and advertising. At the end of the first session, the computer gives a bank statement and a list of customers for the following week. In subsequent runs the procedures are virtually the same, but there's income as well as expenditure to deal with. Additional expenditure might be incurred by visits from the Vet or Farrier and opportunities exist to sell as well as buy horses and tack - they'll need horses to suit their customers. The group have to enter the number of hourly lessons they have scheduled and the prices they have decided to charge for each of the different types of lessons - too much and there's a danger of losing customers; attempt to overwork the horses and the schedule will have to be revised.

I started out by being somewhat sceptical about this program - the thought of running a riding school didn't appeal to me in the slightest - but by the time I'd used it for just a couple of runs, the amount of mathematics used in a "real" situation, the decision making and accurate record keeping required became very evident. Cash and cheque transactions - are they going to take "plastic money"? - weekly income and expenditure accounts, balance sheets, and that's without thinking of producing their own version of Horse and Hound. That may sound far removed from the sort of maths nine pluses are expected to do but I'm sure a high percentage will be able to cope - and enjoy it - and allow you to to delete several tedious pages of "money sums" from your maths textbook. The thought of going broke even at this fairly tender age can stimulate more care and attention to the calculations than the prospects of a gold star ever could. If that works, you might like to do the same for work on the 24 hours clock by using Round the World from the same stable!! I'm surprised they haven't made it open-ended by allowing the user to set up his own scenario - hotel, garage, etc!

I was somewhat surprised to see the statement "Unauthorised reproduction is illegal" printed on the timetables. Most software houses offer to sell additional worksheets or waive copyright to "purchasing institutions". Ginn assure me that "should a purchaser submit a reasonable application for permission to reproduce them, we would not, and have not, refused such permission. The statement is there as a matter of principle, to prevent indiscriminate reproduction outside the purchasing institution." That's pleasing to note - even if it does mean extra work for all concerned!