Secondary Education

We work with Island secondary school and college students around the delivery of the Young Enterprise Company Programme and National Digital Twin programme.
Through these initiatives, we are able to bring students some unique opportunities to learn and develop their personal skills.

What is the Company Programme?

Students in secondary education from across the Island take part in a competition to launch and the trade as a genuine business for the academic year – so starting in the Autumn term and finishing in the Summer term.

Our comprehensive programme each academic year starts with a themed workshop in October around team structure, marketing, production and finance, making sure that our competing teams get off to a flying start.

We follow on with 2 Dragon Dens (in the Autumn & Spring terms) where the teams can gain cash investment through pitching and justifying their business idea to our team of Dragons, members of leading Island businesses.

We also create several high street retail trading opportunities, with pop up shops – where their actual designed and manufactured products and sold and promoted to the general public.

Everything leads up to an Isle of Wight Grand Final in May. In the Grand Final, teams will display their products and business to a number of interested local business people and community leaders, before delivering a presentation to the audience at Minghella Theatre, Quay Arts, Newport.

Each team has a trade stand for their display and presentation of products. .

The top 3 Island finalists go forward to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Final to compete with mainland schools, and then possibly onto the South East Regional Final.

Award Winning Teams

The competition on the Isle of Wight has produced many award winning teams. 4 teams went forward from the IOW Final to the Hampshire and IOW Final. The event was held at Ordnance Survey headquarters in Southampton.

Those teams were Truly Retro (IW College), Wisteria (Ryde Academy), Clouds of Ventnor (St Catherine’s College) and Wicks of Wight (Carisbrooke College).

All the Island teams presented very well. Several teams were successful in the Hampshire and IOW Final, picking up the following awards:

Part of the judging process are trade stand and interview elements.

Business advisor support

Each team is supported by a business advisor, who supports the team in their decision making processes, helping them to navigate through all the expected challenges involved with starting and running a business. Many business advisors so enjoy the programme, that they work with the same school year after year.

As an example, St Catherine’s College is supported by Rebecca Wheeler from Wheeler & Lai Chartered Surveyors, who has acted as business advisor for different school teams in recent years.

The pride that our teams have taken over the development of their business models, over many years, has been great to see. We have seen students really step up and be inspired by the opportunity to grow a business.

The Company Programme has given me skills that you would never get just in normal school.

This has been a great help to me in my application to university.