McLaren_Field wrote:
Will these be genuine businesses providing "real life" goods/services or is it all a bit like running a classroom share trading game thing ?
Genuine, to a point.
It may have changed, but how it worked when I was in school was that a bunch of kids register their interest and are taught the fundamentals of how the scheme works. Those who remain, decide what aspect of business appeals to them; for instance are they ideas people, leaders, organisers, salespeople or accountancy types.
Lets say the popular class bigmouth is interested, he may well be a good salesman, so you'd appoint him as Sales Director. The maths geek might want to be FD, that kind of thing.
You then decide what product or service you want to provide. The year above mine at school bought a load of clock workings, and used the CDT facilities to make a range of wall clocks, which they then sold to family, friends, at school fairs and what have you. We bought a load of first aid items in bulk, and made up some first aid kits, which we flogged for a fiver a piece.
You have to raise money first, though, and you do that by selling shares in the business. The idea then is to use that money to create your product or service, and get yourself into to a position to pay a 'dividend' at the end of the project. Not sure if you can do this now, but we were also given the option of approaching the Midland Bank, who were YE's partner/sponsor, who would give out loans. Not sure what happened if your ability to repay was removed, but I suspect it was a very low amount offered and I also suspect that the loss of this money was probably expected and factored in.
You have to follow usual business rules and provide "accounts" based on real accounting rules. You also have to pay the equivalent of VAT to Young Enterprise itself, which I presume is how they make their money.
At the end of it, you have to wrap your business up and produce final accounts, a report and produce a presentation at a local competition, where you can progress through to town, area, regional and national finals.
It's certainly a challenge for the kids involved. I remember our MD being in tears when we didn't win our heat. It was a good opportunity to step in and offer her some 'comfort' but she was having none of it, sadly.
