How making, marketing, packaging and pricing of cookies gives Year 6 an entrepreneurial taste of Senior School

The transition from Junior School to Senior School can be an exciting yet daunting time. While many of our Year 6 students are already familiar with the Senior School, for some even the short journey from Chaucer Road to Bateman Street represents a major milestone. As one of our measures to ensure that the girls’ transition is successful, we hold a Careers Transition Morning, inviting all Year 6 students from the Junior School.

The morning, organised by Head of Careers, Mrs Mead, provides an opportunity for students to experience the school and its facilities and to help them feel comfortable and excited about the shift to the upper school. With these next steps in mind, this event also provides an early opportunity to begin considering careers and transferable skills, through fun, future-orientated activities.

To introduce the event, Mrs Mead asked the students to suggest jobs/careers that they would like to do when they are older. The girls' creativity and ambition were evident, with some of their responses including vet, teacher, astronaut, lawyer, engineer and musician.  These goals helped to inspire excitement for their futures and the journey towards them, before focusing on the careers’ session of the morning – making oat cookies with an entrepreneurial twist.

The girls attended three workshops, designed to explore the full process of creating a product, from making and marketing to packaging and pricing. In one session, led by Jaspreet Kaur, they discussed how to position, market and brand their oat cookies. Drawing their logos, the girls thought about their target audience and how best to capture their imagination. The girls considered how to diversify the business in the future and how to reach a global market.

In their packaging design session, led by Mrs Kakengi and Mrs Pink, the girls decided on the packaging for their oat cookies by following their business plan.  With the full process in mind, the girls set to work while discussing brand names: 'Maddie's Oats', 'SuperGoodies' and 'Cookie n Co' were just a few of their suggestions.

In the Food Room, the girls created their product, instructed by Mrs Landshoff. With their trays in the oven and the delicious smell of baking cookies filling the room, the students waited eagerly. All the girls agreed that they would rather bake than buy cookies next time. Another student even called this workshop: 

‘The most fun I’ve had in ages.'

The Year 6 students thoroughly enjoyed their time at the Senior School. At lunch, they were challenged to summarise their experience in one word. The girls described their day as ‘amazing’, ‘exciting’, ‘fun’, ‘creative’, ‘inspiring’, ‘fascinating’, ‘best-day-ever’. In the girls’ own words, they now: 'can’t wait to come to Senior School’ while another said that after the sessions:

‘I feel I know more about business and enjoyed working independently.’

We look forward to welcoming the girls to Year 7 next September, and hope that they take their first careers’ session messages with them as they take their next steps at St Mary’s.

See a gallery of images from the day.
Find out more about the careers at St Mary’s