Introduction to Entrepreneurship for Year 6 Students – Part II

What did the pupils learn?

All of the pupils have now gone back to their schools, where they will implement their business ideas. They will then come back for a celebration event in July, where they will have to make a presentation on their progress in front of their classmates, teachers and a panel of real-life entrepreneurs. By the end of this procedure, our year-6 guests will hopefully know all the basic aspects of starting and running a business including practical things such as resource restrictions, the importance of budgeting and the necessity of a specific business plan, while at the same time, they will get the chance to boost their creative thinking.

These are the things our pupils learned. Here is what I learned by project-managing this series of masterclasses: 

1. Organizing an event is NOT an easy thing. Juggling around room bookings, filling out catering request forms (taking into account allergies and any food intolerances), communicating with porters for the room set-up and IT people for the technological support, arranging parking permits and making sure security procedures are followed, is as exhausting as it sounds.
2. Children of the same age are NOT all the same. We held three sessions over three different days and each audience had its own unique characteristics and responded completely differently to the day’s activities.
3. Entrepreneurship is NOT an adult-exclusive topic. I couldn’t help feeling impressed by the business ideas some of the pupils came up with, by the accurate way some seemed to perceive business, and by the maturity and enthusiasm some of them displayed to something that I was afraid might be a boring learning experience to them.

In a nutshell:

Although extremely tiring (imagine having to tame 80 pupils who can’t wait to go out and play after 3 hours of intensive activities) I loved the experience and look forward to more of these events in the future.