Based on the School’s values of communication, leadership, initiative, collaboration and kindness (CLICK), CLICKBIZ in an opportunity given to Year 6 students who work on their projects under the supervision of Mr Palin, Mrs Russell and Miss Laven. Fundamentally CLICKBIZ teaches students key skills they can use throughout School and into their adult life; from learning how to work with and within a team, develop creative ways to create new products, promote themselves and their products, solve complex problems and to identify and play to key strengths.

The CLICKBIZ event

During Year 6, ahead of making their transition to Senior School, students take part in CLICKBIZ in the Lent Term; working towards an end of year celebration event at which they will present and sell their products to the entire School community – the culmination of their work with the offer of a variety of awards and prizes.

Valuable lessons

A staged process, enabling children to understand, develop and deliver their ideas and products, the first part of CLICKBIZ involves forming either a team or a business group, a combination of identified skills sets that they feel compliment and support one another. A Project Manager is assigned alongside a Production Manager, Marketing Director, Financial Director and Design Manager.

This part of the process offers children the chance not only to understand their own personal strengths and in turn what they might enable them to achieve, but to gain a real understanding of their fellow students; understanding how others’ skills can complement their own as well as enable them to learn how to support and rely on one another. A valuable lesson in assessment, co-operation and communication – super transferrable skills for Senior School and life beyond study.

Devise and ideate

The second part of the process is to devise and ideate a product to design and manufacture for sale at the summer fayre. Consideration must be given to the way to market the product ahead of sale, another important and educational part of the process.

Children then perform extensive market research to determine if their imagined product would ultimately be desired – using a number of skills from Maths and English, crossing the curriculum nicely and reinforcing those skills needed and learned.

• Maths – costs and sale prices etc
• English – speaking and listening skills
• Computing
• Graph generation
• Tables for comparisons
• Processing

Design, production and Business Angels

Ultimately their market research, the use of all of their skills, knowledge and findings, as well as intuition and conclusions, leads them to the design and production of one product.

Much like a popular TV series in which entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to extremely successful businessmen and women, The Vipers’ Pit is a forum during which children present their ideas, research and conclusions in order to secure funding. This utilises a number of key skills including presenting, talking in front of people, accuracy on reporting and shared responsibility – the theatre of this particular part of the process is something the children and Vipers look forward to! The objective of this exercise ultimately though is for the children to prove their product is desirable, will sell and be profitable.

This is the point at which the children decide upon and request the investment needed to produce and market their product, and that investment is sought from Business Angels: Year 6 teachers Mr Palin, Miss Laven and Mrs Russell. That Business Angel provides the loan required (the investment, which will of course be paid back through profits from sales) and also guides children through various processes; supporting and supervising where needed.

The aim of the game

Each CLICKBIZ group receives cash to make necessary purchases for the build and promotion of their chosen product; receipts are required and children are held responsible for managing and reporting the spend of the cash they are given, offering them a superb opportunity to develop and perfect money management skills.

Sealing their investment signals the starting point for promotion and advertising across the School community. Adverts are presented in assembly, teams visit classrooms to present and promote their products with the objective of the creation of pre-order lists, with demand and a craze for their products well and truly generated! The aim of the game is to ideally have sold out before the Summer Fayre, to make your product so desirable, to create so much interest, that there will be nothing left to sell!

Working for themselves in their own time

CLICKBIZ teams are expected to manufacture their own products, during their own time; and invaluable lesson in investment in terms of time and effort. Predominantly this manufacturing takes place over the Easter holidays, so that products and promotions are ready in time for the School’s Summer Fayre.

Sharing the profits

The fundamental aim for each of the CLICKBIZ teams is to ensure they sell all of their products and ultimately make a profit; the amount made depends on manufacture and sale price and we have seen over £1,500 profit made in the past – it’s fiercely competitive and an accolade all Year 6 students aspire to have. A proportion of the profit made pays for an ice cream van to visit during the last week of term, this reinforces the benefit of hard work and determination being shared with all in School – another valuable lesson learned.

All other profit donated to a local charity, which in 2022 was EACH who took the time to visit School and talk to the children about the work they do and how money fundraised helps them to provide support to members of our local community.

But the very nature of the competition and the values upon which it is based mean that profit isn’t the only factor considered in terms of identifying an overall winner. Alongside profit, judges are looking for teamwork, resilience, adaptation due to product failure, and many other attributing factors that benefit the students’ learning from the experience. Prizes are awarded in accordance with CLICK skills, and there are various categories each year.