Year 9 Chocolate Challenge – November 20th, 2014

As part of the school’s ongoing Futurewise Careers Programme, all Year 9 students took time out of lessons on Thursday to participate in an Enterprise Challenge. Students worked in teams in the Hall, closely directed by John Watson from Inspiring Futures. Their challenge was to turn their team into a small business with the aim of creating, packaging and marketing an exciting new chocolate brand.

They quickly learnt about the typical structure of a small business and then assigned team members to the roles of Managing Director, Marketing Director, Buyer, Finance Director and Creative Director. Soon it was time to agree upon a brand name, packaging style and how much to spend on materials to enhance their packaging. Meanwhile the marketing, finance and creative experts had to decide on the target market, the cost and pricing structure and the content of their presentation for the launch of the chocolate product.

With so many vital decisions to be made in a short space of time, there was a real learning buzz amongst the year 9 students all morning. Directors needed to use negotiation skills and conflict resolution to inspire their team and all members had to work to a tight deadline to package their product and design their presentation.

Ten teams launched their products in front of a panel of judges: Mr Webb,Head of the Secondary School, Sra Vicente, Directora Tecnica, and Mrs Brice, Head of Key Stage 3. The judges were looking for creativity, teamwork, a strong product and clear marketing message and they were not disappointed. Several teams stood out for their creativity such as Bink Duo, Golden Crown, Crunchy Crime, Delicieux and Bastians but three stood out as having a strong business ethos and a memorable and imaginative product. Third and second places went to Choco Dreamz and Dreamz while first place went to Smilky created by Javier Rodriguez, Amanda Hedman, Mikel Gaztelu, Dimitrije Bogdanov, Paloma Sainz and Vicente Garcia.

While all teams had an enjoyable morning and were rewarded by being able to eat their chocolate products, the importance of their hard work should not be underestimated. The Chocolate Challenge offered invaluable work experience that was carefully designed to build their teamwork, leadership and communication skills and harness their creative and entrepreneurial talents. We hope that the Chocolate Challenge will have inspired our students to become the business movers and shakers of the future.

By Jacquie Brice

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