Upper Thirds Enterprise Day
On the 24th September the Careers department held a day designed to encourage entrepreneurial thinking amongst our students and develop greater awareness of aspects that make businesses successful. This creates a fantastic opportunity for the students to experience working in small teams to achieve their goal, all the while developing transferable skills in leadership, problem solving, communication, time management, critical thinking and creativity/ideation.
This is part of the National Careers Challenge programme, delivered by facilitators from The Inspiration Learning Group (TILG). Each team was tasked with developing a business idea inspired by local needs, considering how they would grow it nationally. They were led through the process of considering how they would promote their business to the local community, creating marketing pitches incorporating role-played adverts and commercial aspects.
Teachers worked with the teams to encourage the students at all stages of the process as they navigated the multiple challenges and deadlines throughout the day. A round of presentations to a panel of judges resulted in the top four presenting to the whole year group who were able to nominate a Students’ Choice. After an industrious day, both judges and students agreed that team Wam Bam Tram were deserving winners. They presented an innovative solution to a public transport problem the students had experienced when visiting Wembley. Their pitch incorporated aspects such as uniform colours coordinated with leaflets for a PR stunt to their target customers and of course a catchy jingle and team dance!
Our post event questionnaire confirmed that they found this a very engaging day. Following the day, most agreed that it helped them recognise their own strengths and skills. It helped them to develop their teamwork, communication and presenting skills and they felt inspired to challenge themselves and try new things going forward.
