The
road to excellence in enterprise
What is the project?
Littlehampton Community School’s (LCS) entry into the Make
Your Mark Enterprise Challenge.
Key objectives
LCS firmly believes that students' aspirations can be realised
through working with the community and local businesses. Links
with Littlehampton 2000 and the Littlehampton Business Partnership
mean that the School is aware of local employers' needs and concerns.
Typically, the Make Your Mark Enterprise Challenge, issued at
the beginning of Enterprise Week in November, was one that the
school was keen to take up.
The Challenge, set by Enterprise Insight and Yell.com, was national
and, initially, was organised on a regional basis.
Actions taken
LCS decided to enter a team of year 10 students who were selected
from 4 separate business studies classes. They were chosen for
their business skills, as well as ability to work effectively
in a balanced team. They gathered together for the first time
on the morning of the challenge to take part in team building
activities, in addition to meeting local business people to work
on the development of the team’s marketing skills.
When the Challenge arrived it required students to develop strategies
for marketing their town. The Littlehampton team threw around
a number of ideas prompted by the various visitor attractions
in the town and spent a good deal of time developing ideas along
these lines. However, only the day before they were due to go
to Winchester to participate in the regional heat, the team had
a change of heart and so it was all systems go in order to get
the idea – selling bottles of sea water in presentation
tins - sorted out; a strategy developed and the detail filled
in.
They made it! They arrived at the regional heat with a completed
presentation of a quirky and simple idea but were, understandably,
not all that confident of their readiness to make a presentation
of their ideas.
Their lack of confidence was ill-founded. The judging panel were
delighted with their idea and a praiseworthy effort resulted in
their selection as the regional winners! The judges commented
on their realistic costings and financial predictions, as well
as their ability to look towards future developments. The next
step – the national finals in London over a two-day period,
6 and 7 December.
The team was one of eleven contenders, one from each region in
England as well as one team from Wales and one from Scotland –
each team had won through their regional heats to make it to the
national final in London.
The final challenge began with the teams being briefed by representatives
of Innocent, the company that has made a runaway success of the
newest health drink – the ‘smoothie’. Following
the briefing the teams spent time, hands-on, experimenting with
blends of fruit, juice, etc, in order to come up with a new taste.
This constituted the first steps to considering a solution to
the new challenge, for each team was to spend their time coming
up with a new drink and developing a marketing strategy for it.
Not surprisingly, it turned out that all eleven teams went on
to develop a distinct variation on the ‘smoothie theme’,
which actually made their marketing task all the harder since,
as the judges later pointed out, there is, probably, a limit to
the range of possible USPs for a health drink.
However, at that time they were not conscious of the difficulties
they were creating for themseves and the teams confidently faced
the second part of the preparation, which was a series of presentations
from Yell.com’s sales and marketing people designed to help
the teams face the tasks ahead. The contenders received a lot
of information in a very short space of time – the presenters
were all professional sales, marteting and PR people and the young
people had to absorb not only the information but also styles
of presentation that they had probably only ever seen in the media.
The briefing sessions over, the teams went away to their team
bases to come up with a marketing strategy for their product.
They had two hours! At the end of the allotted time they had to
hand all of their papers over to the judges who then spent an
hour looking through the materials from each team, forming their
initial impressions, making some early judgements.
However, judgement, of course, was not to be based solely upon
the written notes – each team had to face the judges, ‘Dragon’s
Den’ style, for five minutes during which they had to get
their ideas over in just ninety seconds and then face three and
a half minutes of very close questionning from the judges. But
that wasn’t all! In addition to the ordeal of the presentation
and the questionning the teams had to be aware that they were
‘on camera’ and that every second of their ordeal
was being watched, through video link, by the other contenders,
their teachers, representatives of Enterprise Insight, the sales,
marketing and PR people from ‘Yell.com’, as well as
invited guests.
I have seen many presentations by young people under many different
circumstances. I have never seen presentations of the quality
of those that I witnessed on this occasion. The work these young
people did was impressive and the judges task was thankless –
I am glad that I did not have to make the fine judgements which
saw awards to five different schools, presented by Alan Michaels,
MP, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. The awards were
given as 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the main competition, with two supplementary
awards, one for team work and one for outstanding enterprise.
Having said that the work of all the teams was impressive and
that the judges must have had a difficult task indeed to separate
them, I must note that there was one team that seemed to me to
have just outstripped all the others. They did this in a host
of ways – their presentation was outstanding, even amongst
such quality as we saw that day. Their responses to questions
were well thought through and gave one confidence that these people
could deliver on their excellent strategy. And…they had
stepped, just a little way, away from the ‘smoothie health
drink’ straitjacket and added ‘naughty but nice and
can be healthy too’ chocolate chips to their drink! I don’t
think there was anyone in the audience who did not wish they could
have a taste!
That outstanding team was, of course, the team from Littlehampton
Community School. They received their just reward, being crowned
winners of the national competition, the ‘Make Your Mark’
champions, and being presented with prizes for their school and
for themselves. They deserve sincere congratulations, as do their
teachers, James Collett and Rebecca King.
This demonstrates what can be done with a business orientated
school, inspired to succeed with a fantastic team of students,
dedicated teachers and excellent business links in the community.
School context
Littlehampton Community School is a business and enterprise college
situated in Littlehampton, West Sussex, which is a seaside resort
with award-winning beaches on the south coast of England. A new
riverside development has provided extra attraction for visitors,
over and above the ‘Look and Sea! Visitor Centre’
that features the town’s history.
The Littlehampton Community School (LCS) is a large, mixed, 11-
18 comprehensive school, with approximately 2040 students on roll.
LCS was designated a specialist school for business and enterprise
in September 2003, having brought together many stakeholders to
draw up a successful, first-time bid. Students have opportunities
to study business-related subjects across the key phases and to
take part in a variety of enterprise activities and conferences
including: Proshare Investor Challenge, Young Enterprise, Entrepreneurs
for Tomorrow and Enterprise Week. A new business and enterprise
building has been constructed to widen the opportunities open
to students.
