The competition is open to any girl or team of girls and must be entirely their work. Teams should be no more than six girls and will usually be largely from year nine and above.
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.
Details of competition-specific IFS information will be sent to participating schools. The necessary range of information can also be found on the website of our sponsor, RBS MoneySense. Go to www.rbs.co.uk/moneysenseforschools
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. We are delighted that the giant games manufacturer, Hasbro – maker of Monopoly – will be helping our teams to cost the production of their games.
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 1st. 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 300 people and it will be judged by stars from the BBC’s hit show The Apprentice, led by the steely Margaret Mountford.
Prizes totalling £5,000 will be on offer for the successful schools.
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 final entries will be January 30, 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 on March 1.
This post has been commented 2 times
1
February 8th, 2010 at 5:25 pmBreaking the Mould agenda « FMWF says:
[...] here for more information about the [...]
2
February 14th, 2010 at 9:02 amOur Apprentice hunt down to the last four « FMWF says:
[...] finalists in Financial Mail’s MoneySense Apprentice Challenge for young entrepreneurs, which was open to girl’s schools throughout Britain, have been [...]