The competition is open to any girl or team of girls and must be entirely their work.
The challenge is to design a game – electronic or board – that can be used in the classroom to teach the basics of personal finance education and that can be manufactured on a scale and for a price that would make it a feasible purchase for schools.
The elements to be included in the game form the basis of the IFS School of Finance level 1,2 and 3 qualifications for students aged 14-19 and will appear on Financial Mail’s website for women in business, FMWF.com. At their most basic these will include introducing financial products such as current bank accounts, credit cards and debit cards, loans, interest rates, mortgages and an outline of pensions.
The teams should produce a business plan outlining their costs of production (including elements such as packaging, transport/distribution and promotion) and likely revenues showing awareness of schools’ spending powers.
Each entry should include a filmed presentation – of about 10 minutes – outlining the elements of the specific project. This is an opportunity for the girls to project themselves and their ideas, to give the judges a more rounded sense of the team, how its members have worked together, how they set about the challenge and how they decided which tasks should be allocated to which team member.
With the approval of the contestants and their parents/schools, extracts from some of these presentations may be used online for judging the heats. We will have a panel of judges co-ordinated by Saira Khan who shot to fame in The Apprentice and has now established her own skin products business.
Shortlisted finalists will be invited to an early evening reception to be held after the Breaking the Mould conference on March 8th. The girls will be encouraged to invite family to support them and, if necessary, Financial Mail will help towards transport costs.
The final will take place live in front of the conference audience of about 450 people and it will be judged by Margaret Mountford, Saira Khan and Tim Campbell, stars of The Apprentice.
Prizes totalling £5,000 will be on offer to the successful schools and we hope to persuade a games manufacturer to look favourably on offering a commercial contract to the winner.
Interest in participating should be registered initially by emailing Women@financialmail.co.uk giving: the name of your team, the members of your team, the code name of your project, your school and address as well as a contact email address.
The deadline for entries will be the end of January, 2010. A shortlist will be compiled by February 12. The lucky finalists will be allowed to supplement/replace their filmed presentation in readiness for the live final in March.
This post has been commented 3 times
1
November 25th, 2009 at 11:40 amMargaret Mountford and Nick Hewer to judge FMWF’s £5,000 schools Apprentice Challenge « FMWF says:
[...] More details are on FMWF’s Breaking the Mould page. But hurry! We want to hear quickly from interested teams and the deadline for entries will be mid January. [...]
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February 8th, 2010 at 3:51 pmBreaking the Mould pulls in more top class sponsors « FMWF says:
[...] MoneySense for schools programme is the support for our Apprentice Challenge (click here) which has attracted some incredibly impressive entries. The teams of schoolgirl entrepreneurs were [...]
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February 8th, 2010 at 4:20 pmBreaking the Mould: Careers conference and £5,000 competition for girls « FMWF says:
[...] The climax of what promises to be a stimulating day will be the live final of our MoneySense Apprentice Challenge, a competition to design and bring to market a game to improve the teaching of personal finance in schools. The finalists will be competing for £5,000 of prize money and the judges will be stars of the BBC’s Apprentice led by Margaret Mountford. (For more information about the Apprentice Challenge, click here). [...]