Sixth Form

Feature story March 2012

Business in action at Sidcot

Sixth Form students are able to exercise their initiative and entrepreneurial skills through involvement in two activities currently on offer at Sidcot. Students can get involved in the Young Enterprise Scheme where they can set up and run their own company whilst experiencing the trials and tribulations of budding entrepreneurs. Students experience the problems of coming up with marketable ideas, raising money to launch the business and then putting their ideas into action with a view to making a profit, which is then distributed to shareholders. Supported by a business adviser and link teachers, the students run their own business meetings, organise production and sales, and can learn as much from failure as from success.

The Fairtrade Cooperative, on the other hand, offers a different opportunity for students to involve themselves in promoting the Fairtrade cause through the running of a Fairtrade tuck shop during break on Tuesday and Friday mornings as well as during Quaker week and Fairtrade fortnight. The tuck shop is very popular with students and not only enables the promotion of the cause, including presenting an assembly to the whole school, but also raises a small surplus for donation to charity. At the end of the year the students can decide to which charity they will donate the surplus, which over recent years has amounted to about £300 each year.

Philip Perkins