The Apprentice Meets Year 12

On Tuesday 31st of January, for our project based learning day, we had the privilege of meeting and learning from Claire Young, who made it to the final of The Apprentice with Lord Alan Sugar.

We started the day off by having an introduction to her, what her companies are about and what she has done since starring on the reality television show. She then put us into groups and we had to pick a role model, why we chose that specific person and how they would influence us on starting our own business. Some of the role models that were chosen were Mark Zuckerberg (the creator of the social networking site- Facebook) and also Richard Branson (a successful entrepreneur and owner of the international company Virgin.) The next task that was set by Claire was to ‘name that logo’ which taught us about brand awareness and how important it is to have a memorable, eye-catching logo. There were then 22 photos shown on a presentation of well known entrepreneur and we had to work out who was who in a competition against all the different groups. Some of these included: Bill Gates, Hilary Devey, Steve Jobs and J.K.Rowling.



The task we had to do next was in groups and it was to create our own product or service, which included how we were going to advertise and who our target audience would be, the products brand name and slogan. We had to decide who was the project manager in our groups, and come to agreement about the whole product. Some of the products that were created were: The EdBook - this was a digital tablet that was designed for downloadable textbooks, instant messaging to teachers and educations apps. Another service that was designed was, The Student Life - this was an events service that was for students to use for celebrations such as proms, birthdays and Christmas parties. Another product that was designed was, Comfy Ears - temperature controlled earphones. The products then had to be presented to the whole year along with 3 teachers and Claire and got feedback on them.



At the end of the day we had a debate to show our communication and persuasion skills. The scenario that we got was the world was going to end and we could save 5 people out of 12 to put in a bunker to restart the population, Claire told us that this activity was used in the final round of The Apprentice. We had people including: a mother, a baby, a child, a teacher, a doctor and an entrepreneur, which all had ages with them and we had to strategically decide who we would keep and why.



At the end of the day we asked some of the students, teachers and Claire herself how they thought the day went and here are some of the responses:

“I enjoyed the presentation and the product design” – Dan

“I learnt quite a lot about business” – Mandip

“It was really good to see the students taking ownership of their learning by working together and producing innovative ideas” – Mr Perry

“Being a Northerner, I don’t come down to Kent much and I enjoyed listening to the students’ great ideas and business prospects, and their presentations were excellent.” – Claire Young

We would like to say a very big thank you to Claire and for sharing her knowledge with us, everyone had a brilliant day.

Sophie P and Bethany P