Students savour sweet smell of success

Students savoured the sweet smell of success after throwing themselves into an enterprise workshop challenge. See our photo gallery below

ENTERPRISING Ripon Grammar School students got a taste for developing their own businesses when they were set the task of producing a new box of chocolates.

More than 120 Year 7 students rose to the challenge of designing their North Yorkshire-themed confectionary product and developing a marketing plan - all within three hours.

Divided into teams, students took on the roles of project managers, finance and design managers and advertising executives, and worked together to create and design their product.

They went on to deliver a series of impressive presentations, outlining everything from target audiences to profit levels, environmental sustainability and proposed advertising campaigns.

Their audience included fellow students and RGS staff, along with Jo Thackwray, of Ripon’s Power of Ten scheme, which encourages young people to get involved in volunteering, and Hannah Bewick and Sharon Maddison from the North Yorkshire Business and Education Partnership team, which launched the Chocolate Box Challenge initiative with RGS as a way of helping students build skills for the future.

The winning High Rose team savoured the sweet smell of success after impressing judges with their attractive product, decorated with a Yorkshire rose and including a chocolate sweet dispenser so that boxes could be refilled.

RGS enterprise and work experience coordinator Bob Walker said it was a great opportunity for students to do something outside normal lessons: “Students use their creativity and problem-solving skills to work as a team and to a strict deadline to produce an interesting solution.

“In addition, they have to use their entrepreneurial skills to convince judges that their solution is the best one through their group presentation. The challenge seems so simple but, in reality, it is a really difficult one to achieve in three hours.”

He added that all the students were fantastic and clearly enjoyed the workshop: “Former students have told me this challenge was one of the highlights of their RGS careers."

Winners: top; runners-up, above. The judges, below

FINALIST presentations: