We worked with 50 year 9 students from St Julie’s Catholic High School (who had all recently opted to study GCSE Business studies) on an interactive and fast paced workshop day exploring the advantages of enterprise in education.

The sessions were inspired by the Davies Review of Enterprise Education- an independent review that explores the positive impact of gaining experience of enterprise. The students were required to play a fast-paced and very active trading game in which they represented a range of companies in the very competitive fragrance industry.

Following this, the students used their analytic ability to consider the skills they had used to compete in the game and placed these skills in three categories: ‘creative thinking’, ‘positive attitude’ or ‘self awareness’. This allowed the students to reflect on the skills they had used and to consider how they could be used in the rest of their learning.

The students worked upon these skills in small groups to brand and market “celebrity fragrances”, identifying their unique brand, the promise the fragrance offered and the market the product was aimed at as well as considering where it would be sold and how to bottle and package the product.

Amongst the fantastic celebrity fragrance designs were: “Storm”- “Be sporty and girly”, for Jessica Ennis, “Fragrance Ferdinand”- “No sweat- just spray”, for Rio Ferdinand and “Power”- “You’re the Boss”, for Alan Sugar.

The Head of Business studies said:

“Ten out of ten! All the students thoroughly enjoyed this session- which covered a variety of enterprise skills and concepts!”

The ideas produced left us very impressed by the creativity and ingenuity of the students as well as their intelligent incorporation of enterprise skills.