Harrow Way’s Enterprising Year 10s

This week, Year 10 students at Harrow Way Community School have had an opportunity to take part in two exciting enterprise days.

The first day was led by Mr Angus Farmer of CocoMango, a specialist hand-made soap manufacturing company. Angus was on his second visit to the school following a hugely successful event last year. After learning about the basics needed to form a small business the students worked in teams to create their own soaps. This involved selecting from a wide range of essential oils and blending other ingredients to create a product appropriate to their target audience, then working to cost their proposals before generating effective advertising materials. When their proposals were complete, each group presented its product to a panel of judges in the semi finals, with four teams wining through to the final presentations. The winning finalists were the “Simply Suds” company, with “Sensational Soap” coming second, “Platinum Perfection” third and “Hubble, Bubble, Soap & Trouble” fourth. Angus takes the four winning recipes back to his factory where he will make 50 bars of each soap which the students will later be able to sell, thereby completing their enterprise experience and bringing a sense of reality to their work. We hope the soaps will be ready in time for the school’s next Christmas Bazaar. Keep a lookout for them on sale there!

The second day was based on recycling electronic equipment. Students worked with four representatives from ShP for Enterprise under their “Think Do” project to create and run their imaginary recycling companies.

After a full introduction to the essential business concepts each “company” was given a set brief to follow, including assigning the necessary roles, decision making, marketing strategy, and finance. After working hard to set up their companies and to agree their corporate identities and unique selling points the groups then made presentations to demonstrate their companies to the whole year group. The ShP team worked with the groups at every stage to help them throughout the process, including developing marketing materials to help them ‘sell’ their chosen products.

The day allowed students to develop key enterprise skills including communication, time management and team work as well as building their confidence in making presentations. At the same time they were thinking about and understanding the importance of recycling electronic goods.

Mr Parsons, Assistant Headteacher, commented, “We have been really fortunate to have had this opportunity to work with ShP again this year. The students worked enthusiastically and responded well to the challenges they were set.” He emphasised the benefit to the students of participation in Enterprise Days, saying “it is always a source of inspiration to see the innovative ideas the students come up with and real a pleasure to see the level of cooperation and teamwork when they present their companies to their fellow students. Often when I meet former students I am told that events like these are the ones that they remember most vividly about their school days.”

Many thanks to the team from ShP for making the day so successful and to Roger Buck and Jane Sheridan from First Partnership, for their contribution to the successful organisation and running of both days.

There were individual prizes for Best Managing Director, best Finance Director best Marketing Director, best Internet Marketing Campaign. The winning team overall, pictured, created a company called “EcoSavers”, winning an engraved trophy for their excellent presentation which included stunning musical radio and tv versions of their company advertisement.

Please visit www.shpforenterprise.co.uk for information about the work of ShP Enterprise, and www.firstpartnership.com to view the work of First Partnership (our local Business and Education Partnership).