Prospectus
Downs School Team Win Area Enterprise Day
Our Students win Think Big Competition!
On 16th July 2008 the Downs School team were presented with their certificates and prizes by the Mayor of Newbury as winners of the inter-school enterprise competition, "Think Big".
Over the previous 8 months over 1000 students from West Berkshire schools had taken part in the event organised by West Berksire Education Business Partnership. The students were given the challenge to invent a wacky product for the year 2050. They then had to write a business plan which included market research, sales, marketing and finance elements. Volunteers from businesses such as Vodafone and Gist Ltd also took part helping advise and inspire the students
.
During an enterprise day, all students from Year 10 at the Downs were set, in teams of 6-8 students, the initial challenge to allocate company roles and come up with an idea for a product for 2050. Following presentations of their product and plans for its marketing a team was chosen to represent The Downs School in the area final at Vodafone Headquarters in Newbury. The chosen team, "Criminal Management Org", with their invention of a revolutionary shrinking machine, then gave up many lunch times and other snatched moments to develop their idea and business plan.
On the day of the final, the afternoon was spent at Vodafone, producing a trade stand to display their work and answering questions from the judges. Later on that day parents of the teams represented and school staff were invited to see the displays, hear the final presentation to the judges by the six schools represented in the final and the announcement of the winners
Daisy, Li, Emma, Lottie, Ben, and James of "Criminal Management Org" described how they were planning initially to market their product to governments globally to shrink prisoners from life size to that of a Barbie doll. In this way much savings in space for accommodation and food would be achieved and prison security would be much more manageable! The process is fully reversible and therefore, on release prisoners would be re-introduced into society normal size. Their future plans included developing the technique to use for airline baggage among other applications.
Other finalists were The Willink School company "Snorz" with a dream recording machine, John O'Gaunt company "Zap" with a self contained transport system, Theale Green Community school company "Robo Partner" with their multi purpose domestic robot, The Kennet School company "Penpal" with a self writing pen and Trinity School company "Autodouche" with an automated shower. The judges said how impressed they were with the excellent standard of all they had seen and heard from the finalists. The Downs School were announced as the winning team with a strong product and presentations and all members of the team contributing.
They were presented with certificates and tickets to the The British Invention Show at Alexandra Palace in October.
