Thursday 6 February 2014 A team of year 10 students from The Grammar School at Leeds (GSAL) have reached the business end of a national competition designed to nurture the skills of tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. The GSAL team produced a winning marketing campaign at the regional final of the Real Business Challenge, run by Coca Cola Enterprises Ltd (CCE) in partnership with the charity StreetGames. At the Yorkshire final, held this week at the Royal Armouries in Leeds, the team saw off tough competition from nine other schools to secure their place at the national final in March. Competitors had to devise a promotional campaign to increase awareness of a StreetGames multi-sport festival taking place this summer. They only learned of the brief on arrival and had just one day in which to design a poster and an app, create a viral video and prepare a presentation before pitching their campaign to a team of four judges. Each team worked with a mentor from CCE. Student Sophie Wilson said: “Our mentor was inspirational, helping us with business definitions to make our designs more sophisticated. He gave very constructive feedback and helped us keep our presentation concise.” Just two of the GSAL team, Sobaan Ali and Dhaval Sethi, are working towards a GCSE in business studies, and on hearing about the competition the two boys took it upon themselves to recruit the rest of the team. Cara Balen explained why she rose to the challenge: “I got involved because it sounded like a great opportunity to develop our team-working skills and business knowledge whilst getting some real hands on experience.” Jackie Street, GSAL’s deputy head of economic studies, said: “Our students were very impressive; they didn’t stop working all day. They had to think on their feet as they didn’t know the task in advance, however they prepared by working on their presentation skills which stood them in good stead for the final pitch.” The eight team members (pictured l-r Sobaan Ali, Cara Balen, Sophia Wakefield, Dhaval Sethi, Sophie Wilson, Jamie McDonald, Jireh Chiu and Harry Street) will compete in the national final against 10 other school teams from across the UK, in London on 25 March. General Senior School News
