Community Correspondent Irina Harutunyan

As part of enrichment classes, which are extracurricular activities that are aimed to widen the knowledge of students, Gumley House Convent School has offered eleven year 12 students the opportunity to construct and run a business of their own through a programme called ‘Young Enterprise’.

Young Enterprise is the UK’s leading business and enterprise charity for education. The programmes aim is to teach children to ‘learn by doing’, the programme is run throughout England and currently has 5,500 schools and colleges participating, giving the opportunity to create a business and do something The girls at Gumley started from scratch, and their task was to produce a brand new, unique product to sell within their school. Their first product was a hand-made, exquisite make-up bag which they sold at the Christmas Bazaar at their school.

The students have decided to donate all their profits to a number of charities, which is very generous of them and also gives the incentive for people to kindly purchase their product, and some give extra donations for charities. The enrichment consists of the production of a number of different products and two exams. With Easter approaching, the students at Gumley have decided to make a product that could be used as a gift for Easter.

Economics and business teachers have been helping the students and guiding them throughout the process of both production and in preparation for their exam.