Over 125 students from year 10 in Tanfield School of Science and Engineering have stepped into their Dragon’s Den to pitch their product ideas as part of Maths Enterprise Week. Maths Enterprise Week is being piloted by teacher Leanne Dotchin from Tanfield’s Maths department. Leanne was keen to demonstrate to students the importance of maths both personally and professionally in their future lives.

The school is working in partnership with international business Formica Group who has global operations based in North Shields. Formica’s Director of Innovation Gary Brown set students the challenge of designing an innovative product for use in the study or work environment.

The partnership between Tanfield and Formica has been coordinated by Louise Wilkinson of Derwentside Enterprise Agency. Louise commented ‘It has been a pleasure to see the work of Formica and Tanfield coming together to produce some remarkable student enterprises. The input from industry has been of such a high standard and it is encouraging to see businesses and employers working with schools’.

Over two days students have spent considerable time exploring ideas and setting up mini-businesses to meet the challenge. They have had to carry out market research, create a budget and a business plan in order to prepare themselves to pitch to industry experts. Throughout this process they have been supported by local entrepreneurs, business coaches and designers.

The industry experts set themselves up as a panel of ‘Dragons’  in the style of the popular BBC1 programme and grilled more than 20 student teams on their business concept.

The enterprising students rose to the challenge and delivered some excellent pitches fielding difficult questions from the panel of dragons.

Ben Strutt, Design Senior Specialist of One NorthEast said:  “I have been really impressed by the presentations of some truly unique design concepts. It was fantastic to see the students’ enthusiasm for enterprise and design’’

The 12 dragons represented some of the most innovative businesses from around the North east, including Paul Alderson of Wonderstuffstudio, Goff Monaghan of Dane Group and Heather Baxter of Geni Marketing.

After long deliberation the quality of ideas was so high that the dragons insisted that extra projects were put forward for production. Tomorrow the hard work begins, where the 6 new businesses will have to produce enough units to sell in Durham City Centre on Friday. With the added bonus that the pupils will get to keep any profits made!

1 July 2010