Blanchelande business students place third in national competition
A team of three Year 10 Blanchelande business students has placed third in a national business competition for schools.
The team, consisting of James Mills, Francesco Cacace and Oliver Pedersen, all 15, was one of 69 which took on the challenge of running a virtual company using the Revas travel agency simulation game.
The students had to make realistic managerial decisions and solve life-like problems as part of a travel agency business, in areas including investments, HR, marketing, sales and finance. As well as framed certificates, medals, and a trophy for their school, the team won £50 in Amazon vouchers.
Francesco said the team had got involved with the challenge at the end of March following a webinar discussing the competition.
‘The school could enter one team from Key Stage 4,’ he said.
‘The competition lasted for six weeks and every week there was a different aspect of the business to focus on and make decisions about.’
Oliver said that the team had been well-tested by the event, which saw teams split up into six groups of 10 and one of nine before the winners of each group battled it out for the overall title.
‘We had to think about what the demand for the holidays we were selling would be and how that changed depending on the time of year, as well as how many staff to employ and how many workstations to invest in.
‘If we lost money we didn’t score any points, so we had to be careful.’
James said the team was able to see how others were doing on the leaderboard throughout the competition, which meant that they could pick up on ideas that were working for them if they needed some inspiration.
‘There was one team ahead of us in third near the end but luckily we managed to get ahead of them in the last week.’
All of the boys agreed the competition had been fun, and had made them think about whether they wanted to set up their own businesses in the future.
‘Maybe if the current economic state improves,’ Oliver said.
Blanchelande’s head of business studies Susie Sloman said the competition had provided a wonderful opportunity for the students to put the theory they had learned as part of their GCSE business course into practice.
‘They took their roles very seriously, taking careful consideration as to what price they were going to charge for their holidays, how many people they were going to employ and what they were going to pay them,’ she said.
