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Terrigal High School

Terrigal High School

A quality comprehensive education with a history of academic success.

Telephone02 4384 4677

Emailterrigal-h.school@det.nsw.edu.au

Year 10 Illuminate Nextgen Challenge

Illuminate Nextgen Challenge

Last week our Year 10 students completed the Illuminate Nextgen Business Challenge. This enabled our students to deepen their understanding of the business world whilst developing the entrepreneurial spirit and 21st century employment skills required to prosper in their world beyond school - collaboration, communication, coachability, commitment, creativity and critical thinking. 

 

In teams of approximately 8-9 students, all 20 teams had to collaborate and complete a number of challenges by very strict deadlines throughout the week, as well attend a number of lectures delivered by business people. They were provided with some background information about our harrowing health statistics on the Central Coast and teams had to come up with a plausible business idea which would help deal with some of the health issues. Some of the challenges included:

 

1. Submitting a 'Business Model Canvas' 

2. Presenting their idea early on to a panel of local business people which aimed to offer teams support to improve their ideas.

3. Presenting an 'elevator pitch' - where students had to 'sell' their idea in 30 seconds.

4. Submitting a Market Research Report.

5. Submitting a Draft Business Plan giving students an opportunity for valuable feedback in preparation for their final submission

6. Preparing Finance Statements for their business including a Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss Statement.

7. Submitting a Marketing Package including a mix of promotional materials (social media, radio advertisement etc)

8. Submitting a final Business Plan.

9. Presenting a sales pitch of their business idea to a panel of business people explaining why they might want to invest in the business.

10. Solving a 'pressure cooker' task within a very short period of time so that teams could demonstrate their problem solving skills as well as prove how adaptable the business was.

11. Producing a trade display giving teams the chance to provide a taster of their business to prospective customers and all teachers and students from other years, were given the opportunity to inspect these and cast their vote.

 

The week culminated in an Awards Evening last Friday night at which our Federal Member of Parliament, Lucy Wicks opened the event and was able to speak to our students about their business ideas and trade displays.  We are most grateful to Ms Wicks for her involvement.

 

Congratulations to the following teams who were our award winners (although every team deserved an award!!)

 

We are so grateful to those business people in our business community who gave their time and shared their wisdom with our students throughout the week including:

Mike Faulkner - Managing Director (Australia and New Zealand), Verizon

Sharon Green and Dominique Brown  - Marketing Managers, Sanitarium

Catherine Turner - Executive Manager - Primary Health Network

Lynsey Stanley - Wild Fig Service Alliance and local business owner

Scott Madden - owner of The Body Movement Gym

Pheadra Pym - Wild Fig Service Alliance and local business owner

Scott Wood - Primary Health Network

Scott Slater - Primary Health Network

​Megan Burgess - THS School Captain 2015 (currently studying Business and Global Leadership at Macquarie University)

In addition to our truly amazing facilitators at Illuminate, Jed Saville and Tara Davidson, we are also grateful to the following teachers who helped supervise the week and whose contributions were invaluable:

 

Maddison Spence

Annette Rankin

Nick Staniford

Ben deSomma

Amanda Cooke

 

Finally, and most importantly, we are so incredibly proud of the levels of maturity, commitment, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking exhibited by our Year 10 students as well as their competitiveness and entrepreneurial spirit - their business ideas and the quality of their submissions were absolutely commendable.  Elyce Bates, our fabulous careers adviser, and myself, have been overwhelmed by what they have achieved.

 

Dale Massie

Business Studies, Legal Studies and Economics Teacher