Article written by Briony Appletree and Sophie Grose, Year 13 at Post 16.
New Year 12 students at The Cooper School’s Post 16 Centre use their entrepreneurial skills to develop exciting new consumer products with Bicester Vision’s Young Enterprise scheme.
Upcoming Year 12 students showed their enthusiasm for developing their designing and selling skills during their first induction day at The Cooper School’s Post 16 Centre. Five groups of students worked in independent teams to design, advertise and pitch their product to some of the UK’s most highly rated business experts from Bicester Vision. The brief consisted of developing a new games console for the consumer market. Along with advice from business experts, the Year 12 students were given support from the current Year 13.
“This experience gives students the opportunity to develop their teamwork skills, as well as their skills of negotiation and cooperation,’ says Cate Mallalieu-Needle, Director of Post 16 studies at The Cooper School, “it has been particularly good to see the positive way in which the Year 13 students have worked with the new Year 12 students alongside the local business expertise.”
This team building exercise helped the new year 12 students to meet and work closely alongside their form tutors for the next academic year. Year 13 students know that the relationship between form tutor and student is key for support and success during A-level studies.
“Today has given me the opportunity to interact with others within my form group as well as giving us the chance to form friendships with students from different secondary schools”, says Francois Blin from the team “Fun”.
Each group of students was expected to pitch its ideas to an audience of business experts, form tutors and the four other competing teams. Awards were given to teams, including awards for marketing, product design, and the team which made the most profit. The award for the team ‘most likely to succeed’ went to YEM. Congratulations to them.
The first induction day was a huge success in terms of encouraging new Year 12 students to interact with other members of the sixth form, and to develop key skills for the future.