Enterprise & Entrepreneurship

This year has seen two new high-profile additions to our enterprise initiatives.

Aspiring business women

Our first new initiative, is the Tycoon Enterprise Competition, run by Dragons’ Den entrepreneur Peter Jones. This challenges students to produce a comprehensive business plan, including all costs and projected revenues.

Students then apply to the Peter Jones Foundation for a grant of up to £1,000 per school. Successful teams have a 5-week trading window in which they aim to make as much profit as possible. Our Year 10 team, comprising Emma B., Daniela R. C. and Gemma M. R. worked extremely hard to become the first ever St Mary’s team to have their business proposal approved.

The girls created a blog called 'International Girls and Books' in which they offer a range of services, including blogs and other promotions, in return for a fee from American authors looking to promote their books in Europe. Their trading window is still open at the time of writing, however they have already secured 3 clients in their first two weeks.

The girls have learned a huge amount from the process, demonstrating a wide range of HPL characteristics in the process. They should be particularly commended on the originality of their business idea.

I have been impressed with the complex and multi-step problem solving that they have used to overcome obstacles, such as avoiding copyright issues and the implications of dealing with payments in different currencies in the midst of a turbulent economic environment. The girls will find out at the end of the year if they will be successful in being invited to the celebration event at Buckingham Palace. 

Enterprising girls reach national finals

We also lauched the NatWest National Enterprise Competition, for Year 9 for their Academic Curriculum Enrichment (ACE) day.

This is arguably one of the most prestigious enterprise competitions nationally, and huge thanks must go to the Circle of Friends for offering to fund the activity.

77 students took part in a full-day competition hosted by two members of the Inspirational Learning Group, in which they worked in groups of six to promote a new flavour for the energy bar brand 'Grenade'. This involved a variety of marketing-based tasks, including making an advert, producing promotional materials and coming up with Snapchat filters and celebrity endorsements that would fit their concept.

The day concluded with the girls presenting their idea to the rest of their year group and a panel of judges. The winning team, which was comprised of Lily E., Yujia F., Tilly M., Hana M. P., Chloe T. and Kim T., secured a place at the national finals at the ICC in Birmingham. 

All girls should be commended for the intellectual playfulness demonstrated by their fantastic ideas and their bravery in each presenting on stage to a room of nearly 100 people. Observing the groups throughout the day, staff were particularly impressed by the speed at which the girls were able to effectively complete the tasks within strict time frames.

This was a result of their effective strategy planning at the start of the day to make the best use of the range of skills their team members possessed. We very much look forward to running this event for Year 9 next year, once again with the support of the Circle of Friends.  

Our enterprise opportunies are part of our in-depth range of opportunities to extend and enrich approach to learning.

Extend and enrich

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