Enterprise Week

The 2007 ‘Make Your Mark Challenge’

On Monday 12th November all Year 10 pupils battled it out with tens of thousands of other young people from all over the country as part of the nation’s biggest ever live and simultaneous enterprise challenge. This year's theme was "make it pay in a globalocal way". This generated lots of ideas ranging from a solar-powered TV, an innovative mp3 playing blue-tooth headset to an environmentally friendly family leisure park.

The one-day enterprise competition was specifically designed to foster teamwork, kick-start imaginations and unleash creativity for developing money-making ideas.Working in small groups students had just one day to complete the task before presenting their ideas for judging. As the UK based Mark your Mark Challenge may go international next year, we had a group of interested visitors during the afternoon judging session. They were a Finn (representing the European Commission), a Croatian, a Romanian, a Canadian, a Frenchman and two Brazilians. As a Language College we welcome visitors from overseas. They all really enjoyed their afternoon at Connaught School.

Each school that participated will submit their winning team’s entry and judges will select 20 teams to attend one of the eleven Regional Finals. The 11 successful regional winners will then compete at the National Final in December where the country’s most enterprising school will be determined. Last year the Make Your Mark Challenge was the biggest single activity in Enterprise Week with over 11,000 students taking part. Frances Scott, Deputy Headteacher commented: “The Make Your Mark Challenge is a great opportunity for our school to recognise and develop students’ enterprise skills from an early age. It’s a great start to Enterprise Week 2007.”

Women’s Enterprise Day

On Wednesday 14th November we celebrated women’s enterprise by welcoming a past student, Amara Sharif, to the school to tell pupils in years 9 and 10 about her life since leaving Connaught. Amara realised half way through her “A” level studies that to achieve her goal she needed to work very hard. Amara gained a first class honours degree from Kings’ College, London, and is now working for the Deutsche Investment Bank. It was very interesting to hear Amara’s story and we hope that she can return to Connaught in the near future.

Other Activities

Thursday 15th November was Social Enterprise Day. All girls had the chance to download a single free from:

Wippit - Make Your Mark (opens in a new window)

Throughout the week Ms Amos worked with a group of year 10 pupils who were running mini-enterprises around the school. They have learnt how to make a profit by providing a needed service to their fellow pupils.

Click here to find a gallery of photographs taken from the 2 main events.