Gloucestershire's Young Entrepreneurs develop ideas into real campaigns for GCHQ judges

The GFutures Education team has taken 7 local schools with over 50 students to GCHQ to pitch their business ideas to a panel of judges, as part of the GFutures Young Entrepreneurs Competition.

The competition saw teams of Year 9 students come up with an original and imaginative product or service, which they presented at the final hosted by GCHQ in Cheltenham.

There were some fantastic ideas from students who were given the brief of ‘Making a busy business person’s life easier when it comes to traffic and travel’. The student’s ideas were initially judged by an independent panel at their school earlier this year, before presenting their product or service to a panel of judges at GCHQ.

Working in small teams, students included aspects of essential business processes such as finance, advertising and marketing that successfully capitalised on their idea. The judges were overwhelmed with the creativity of the ideas, and praised the students on the work they had put into the competition. The final results from the Young Entrepreneurs Competition are:

1^st place: Cheltenham College
2^nd place: The Crypt School
3^rd place: Dean Close School

Jason Dunsford from GFutures said: "This is a tremendous opportunity for us to engage with schools and business people that volunteer their time, to help bridge the gap between education and business. We are proud to partner GCHQ in encouraging young people to think about innovation and the related business processes of successfully taking a product or service to the market."

Judith Knight, Business Mentor in schools with GFutures and Director of Connected Coaching, said: “It is extremely rewarding to volunteer my time as a Business Mentor with GFutures in local schools supporting young people with their futures, whilst linking education and the real business world. The Young Entrepreneurs project is challenging for students to think out of the box on a new and innovative product or service, however we have seen them really rise to the challenge with some fantastic ideas, whilst growing in confidence.”  

Deputy Chief Technical Officer at GCHQ and head judge said: "This is one of the most enjoyable things of the year I do, because to see the enthusiasm and entrepreneurial spirit of the youngsters makes me really optimistic for the future.”

All schools from around Gloucestershire are able to enter the competition; if your school is interested in taking part in the next academic year, please get in touch with Katherine for more details on katherine.johnson@gfutures.co.uk.

GFutures are always looking for new Business Mentors to volunteer to help with programmes, to get involved visit the website for more dates and details www.gfutures.co.uk.