Enterprise challenges
For several years, we've been involved in special initiatives designed to give students the skills and experience they need to become the business entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
Run by CCE with regional partners, these initiatives link with UK national curriculum requirements and support the Government's enterprise education agenda. Throughout, students are given challenges that help develop skills like:
- Problem solving
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Financial capability
- Creativity
The Real Business Challenge
The Real Business Challenge has been operating successfully in Yorkshire for the last four years. In 2008, we asked teams of pupils to draw up a business plan for setting up their own soft drinks company. The challenge involved finding a location within the school's local area to site a drinks manufacturing plant.
Around 8,000 pupils from schools across Yorkshire took part. The best business plans were entered into a sub-regional competition between schools across Yorkshire, in which participating teams could develop their plans further.
- All teachers who register for the challenge receive a full day of professional training at our Wakefield site
- In 2008, around 100 teachers received the training
- Every school involved is given a comprehensive pack to help deliver the challenge, with more information on a dedicated website
Following endorsement from the UK Department for Children, Families and Schools, CCE and its partners are now working together to roll out this project nationally.
The RBC has really been a really great business experience. I have gained valuable life skills and am a much more confident speaker. I am now even considering business as a career! If I could do it all over again, I really would (and win again too)!
Katy (16 years old),
Managing Director,
Brigshaw High School,
Leeds
The West London Enterprise Challenge
In the West London Enterprise Challenge, teams of school pupils compete to design, pitch and market a new soft drinks brand, finally launching it at an event in Wembley Stadium.
The challenge is open to over 3,000 year 10 students from 30 schools across several London boroughs:
- Brent
- Harrow
- Hammersmith
- Fulham
- Ealing
- Hounslow
- Hillingdon
Eighty-one students took part in the final in November 2008. Each team worked with a volunteer business mentor from Coca-Cola Enterprises. They also received a motivational speech from Levi Roots, inventor of Reggae Reggae sauce - a winner on TV's Dragon's Den.
The winning team was Supernova, from Whitmore High School in Harrow, who created a tropical fruit-flavoured drink called Paradise.
East Kilbride Education Centre Enterprise Challenge
Fifty students from six South Lanarkshire schools took part in a challenge to design a new soft drinks product.
Uddingston Grammar won the challenge with a product targeted at young people on the move called VIP - Squeeze. The 100% fruit juice was designed as a "Very Important Pouch for a Very Important Person". It was to be packaged in a soft pouch, which can be worn around the neck.
As a prize, the five members of the Uddingston Grammar team spent a day at the Glasgow Metropolitan College to manufacture a prototype model of their packaging. They spent a further day with local media and branding agency Lateral Line to produce an advertising poster to launch their product.
One student commented, "I didn't realise how much thought and development went in to making sure the packaging would actually function and hold the weight of a drink."
