In short: The Enterprise Challenge was introduced as part of the Welsh Baccalaureate Qualification to develop entrepreneurial skills that will be essential in further education and employment. All students undertake a team activity to create a business proposal for an innovative product or service to satisfy a brief they are given.
Age group: Students are between 14 and 16 years old.
Initial challenges: The Enterprise Challenge requires the students to use skills they have not previously experienced, such as innovation, creativity and, in this context, teamworking. Assessment comprises of a combination of a written business proposal, skills audit and observation of the pitch. Students with limited literacy skills could be disadvantaged due to the written element even though they have demonstrated good entrepreneurial skills.
What they did about it: Students are introduced to mini challenges when joining the School in year 7 (11/12 years old) and each year thereafter, until they complete the Welsh Baccalaureate Enterprise Challenge in year 10 (15/16 years old). Before the final assessment there is a teaching and learning programme, which is taught by specialist teachers, and another mini challenge. These are used to revise and develop both the pupils’ entrepreneurial skills and the skills required to create their report.
Results: Students enjoy enterprise education due to the repeated exposure to the various mini challenges and the engaging and interactive teaching and learning programme. By the time the students have to complete their assessed Welsh Baccalaureate Enterprise Challenge, the students are able to complete a detailed Skills Audit with areas for development, understand how to write a SWOT analysis and the 5P’s of Marketing (product, price, people, place, promotion). They have also learned about what makes an effective team and the skills required for different roles. When choosing their teams, students are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and use this information to ensure they are a member of a balanced team. This generally leads to a mixture of skills and abilities within each team and allows the students with weaker literacy, and other skills, to achieve higher marks.
Relevance for entrepreneurial teaching: Students gain a range of entrepreneurial and employability skills, such as an awareness of the shared responsibilities when working as a member of a team and how teamworking can make difficult challenges more manageable through sharing tasks. They also learn how to communicate, speak and listen to others, especially when choosing to work with team members who are not normally part of their friendship groups, and how to negotiate when there are disagreements.
Applied assessment methods and tools: Assessment of the Enterprise Challenge is through an assessment grid which assesses ‘Creativity and Innovation’, Personal Effectiveness’ and ‘Understanding the factors involved in an Enterprise Challenge’.
Contact information: Chris John, JohnC129@hwbmail.net
Website: https://pentrehafod.school/