Team’s originality and confidence impress judges

QE took second place in the London final of the popular national Real Business Challenge.

The challenge is an annual competition run by Coca-Cola Enterprises Ltd (CCE) as part of its award-winning education programme. This year, it attracted entries from more than 750 schools across Great Britain – a total of around 10,000 contestants.

The Year 10 team of Ananthanarayanan Balaji, Adrian Burbie, Christopher Deane, Premakathyian Premsankar, Luxshan Ragupathurajah, Aditya Ramachandran, Umang Thakrar and Shavhugan Vimalendiran were among just 70 students to reach the London regional final.

“This success reflects the boys’ commitment, hard work and ambition,” said Economics teacher Sonia Strnad. “Personally, I was extremely proud of their success in securing second place in only our first year of competition in this challenge.”

In the London final held at The Oval cricket ground, the ten teams were required to work as a company to develop a campaign to raise awareness for The Street Games – a national charity that aims to bring sport to young people in disadvantaged communities across the UK.

As part of their digital campaign, contestants had to prepare a ‘viral video’ and create an ‘app’.

They also had to prepare a campaign poster, along with a budget summary and a final presentation in which they delivered their ideas for ‘blue sky thinking’ to a panel of judges from CCE and The Street Games.

“The boys delivered the most professional, confident and innovative presentation of their campaign at the regional final,” said Mrs Strnad. “This was confirmed by the organiser, who commented on the fact that in her four years of running this competition she has not seen more original and confident delivery.

“This was a fantastic experience for our boys; they worked efficiently as a team and were able to apply their independent, critical and interpersonal skills to every task of the day.”