Young enterprise is a scheme ­which helps 220,000 young people every year learn about the business world teaching them saving, earning, decision making and teamwork. The scheme enables 15 to 19 year old students to run their own real companies for a year and get a pure understanding of what it is like to own a company. The students can do virtually anything they want in order to make their company a successful, thriving business.


At Lancaster House, 7 Elmfield Road Bromley, on the 8th of November I went along to the young enterprise launch meeting for the Bromley borough. There I was able to meet other teams who were also involved within the scheme, unfortunately only three teams bothered to turn up, but who could blame them? The two schools which did show up were Newstead Wood (two teams) and St Olaves (one team), who decided to sit on opposite sides of the room. Other schools involved are: Hayes, Bullers Wood and Bromley College. Mr Jonathan Bates, manager of the young enterprise scheme for South London talked the students through what they should expect and gave them helpful hints about how they should go about creating their businesses. Jonathan went on further to say that at the end of the scheme, the performance of the young enterprise companies will be evaluated and judged, the teams will therefore compete for the title of the best young enterprise company in the Bromley borough. Everyone taking part is also offered the opportunity to take the OCR young enterprise qualification exam in May 2013. Jonathan also explained that ‘participants in the scheme under estimate the power of blagging stuff, and therefore tend to make their product inexpensive’ so we will definitely be sure to “blag stuff” when it comes down to it.


I spoke to Tom Oxley, IT director and assistant manager of team “velocity” at Newstead Wood school ‘I hope to make at least £100,000 to half a million” he says, rather ambitiously. ‘But some people need to put more effort into attending meetings’ he sarcastically hints to a girl on his right. Tom goes on further to say ‘the competition is poor’ and feels that his team is better than their Newstead rivals. Other members of the team said they were finding it stressful, even in the early days of their company. Sadly they are not willing to share their business ventures as they are “confidential”.