The 10X Challenge (previously, ‘The Tenner Challenge’) is an annual enterprise competition for young people aged between 11 and 18 years old.
The Challenge is run by Young Enterprise, the UK’s leading enterprise and financial education charity. Each team of budding entrepreneurs are given £10 to get their business idea off the ground and are tasked with making as much money as possible over a four-week period. At the end of the challenge period, the teams then re-pay their £10 capital and donate all profits to their chosen charity.
This year, students in Year 8 and 9 at St Edward’s were challenged to get involved, working collaboratively to form a business, carry out market research, set targets and sell their final product.
Each week, they were able to enter a different competition, with the best entry being submitted to the 10X team and judged amongst other teams nationally. Awards were available for
- Most Profitable Business Idea
- Best Team
- Most Inspiring Person
- 10X for Good
- Best in Sustainability
The efforts of each team were also judged on innovation, creativity and problem-solving ability.
There were two 10X Challenge teams this year:
Our Year 8 team, Leah and Ioana, write:
Our business started in April and is a tennis club. We decided on a logo that represented vitality and youth. With the Deuce name for our company. We wanted to raise money for Maggie’s Cancer Care Centre in Cheltenham. We offered tennis coaching to students in Year 4 at the Prep School and had a very good take-up rate (12 out of 14!). We even had to turn away pupils from other year groups due to COVID. We were given £10 by the Business Department and had to sign a document to say that we would return this at the end of the Challenge.
We really enjoyed this experience and building a bridge with the Prep School students. We made sure that we did various activities that the children found fun. We gave 100% of the profits to charity. In the future we hope to extend the business and carry on teaching children, perhaps sharing our experience and skills in music and drama.
Our Year 9 team, Victor and Bill, write:
We decided that we could offer cold refreshments as the Summer Term began. We developed a logo based on our surnames, with a sense of getting moving: Rollin’ Stock. With our £10 investment from the Business Department, we bought freezable fruit ice pops, and we sourced an ice box from home. Working closely with Mrs Safe we were able to keep the ice pops frozen until break, and then we sold them to different Year group ‘bubbles’ in a COVID safe way. Due to popular demand, we returned several times and had to re-stock! By half-term we had made £91 for Maggie’s Cancer Care, repaid the start-up capital and covered our costs.
The challenge is a fantastic way to put Business education into real-life context and encourages the development of crucial employability skills and experience. The hope is that the skills developed during this Challenge will serve the students well in the fast-changing world of work and help them to prepare for their future. We look forward to starting the Challenge once again, next spring
