Year 10 pupils at Queen Elizabeth’s have secured an impressive victory in the North London Final of this year’s Young Enterprise competition. Two teams were entered by QE: Envisage and QuEst. Envisage will take part in the London Final to be held in Canary Wharf later this month.
The North London competition was entered by a total of forty-eight companies and nearly six hundred students; the eight most successful companies were invited to the Final on Wednesday 30th April. Despite being two years younger than most of their competitors, three of the four main awards were given to boys from Queen Elizabeth’s. In addition to securing the main prize for ‘Best Company’, Envisage also won the award for best presentation, while QuEst were awarded best display stand.
Young Enterprise is committed to ‘learning by doing’ and students taking part in the programme, set up and run their company over the course of one academic year. They elect a board of directors from amongst their peers, raise share capital, and market and finance a product or service of their own choice. At the end of the year they present a report and accounts to their shareholders. Students gain experience of the real world: taking responsibility and being accountable to their shareholders for the running of the business. Boys at Queen Elizabeth’s are also able to draw on the experiences of business advisers Robert Book and John Deverson, who act as their mentors throughout.
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Jed Wilsher, the Managing Director of Envisage, opened the presentation of his team’s product, Bon Appétit, which is a discount card for use in local food outlets and restaurants. He was supported by the other main board directors: Amit Desai, Jonathan Flowers, Sergio Ronchetti-Carete, Nir Shah, Sam Sherman and Kamran Tajbakhsh. They spoke about how the project has developed their abilities to work in a team, improved their communication skills and given them more self confidence.
QuEst’s work has focused mainly on their Destination Zero game which aims to educate companies about their environmental impact. The company was represented at the final by Thomas Elliot, Steven Haveron, Joseph Masters, Charles Morris, Alex Rozanski, Abhijai Shah and Jin Min Yuan. Disappointed not to be going through to the next round, the team looks forward to developing the product further and has now set its sights on the UK Intellectual Property Office’s ‘Cracking Ideas’ competition.
The Envisage team was supported by Vickash Seeburrun, whilst the boys in QuEst were guided by Rakhee Bavishi. Mr Seeburrun and Miss Bavishi both teach in the Business Education department. Liane Ryan, Head of Business Education said, “Both teams of Year 10 boys performed extremely well and judging of the overall winner was a close fought contest between the two.”