Five Year 8 students from The Totteridge Academy took a trip to Middlesex University last week to test out their entrepreneurial skills.
As part of the trip, the students took part in the university’s annual Junior Entrepreneurs Competition along with young people from schools across the region. The event, which took place during Global Entrepreneurship Week, is part of the university’s wider campaign to encourage local students into business.
The challenge brief for this year’s participants was to develop a leisure and extracurricular building for Middlesex University’s Hendon campus. They had to come up with ideas about what the building could offer, write a business plan explaining their costings and set out tactics for marketing the facilities. Students then presented their proposal to a judging panel.
The event was an excellent opportunity for The Totteridge Academy students to develop their business acumen and enterprising ideas, whilst giving them an early taste of university life.
Jennie Tilley, Head of Business and Social Sciences at The Totteridge Academy, who organised the visit, said:
“I was very impressed with our students’ performance in the competition and they were excellent ambassadors for our academy. It was a challenging task – similar to what we would expect our GCSE-level students to be working on – but our Year 8s showed great perseverance and enthusiasm.
“Over the course of the day, they came up with a range of well thought-out ideas, worked well as a team and presented a very engaging proposal to the judges. I hope that the experience has given them the confidence and knowledge to tackle more enterprise challenges like this in the future and continue to develop as young entrepreneurs.”