Fourth Formers work together for National Enterprise Challenge

For the third consecutive year, Fourth Formers at Shrewsbury School participated in the National Enterprise Challenge. Harry P-M (I) shares his recollections of the day below.

On the 10^th of May 2022 myself and the whole of the 4^th form took on the National Enterprise Challenge as part of the Futures Programme.

We were split up into random teams of five or six and I found it extremely good fun to be able to work with some people I had never spoken to before and understand what they wanted to do about this opportunity. We were challenged to create a new Esports game for an individual target market, so as a team we came up with the idea of making the first environmentally educational game for children (Tree Saviour). Throughout the day we were set with multiple challenges by our instructor which included, our very own Esports event, new technology, online security, influencers, sponsors etc. My specific role was to develop our new technology and create the welcome screen/lobby for our game. Personally, I enjoyed presenting to the audience of over 100 people the most, because I got to show off what the team and I had produced throughout the day.

In the semi-final we had to present our work to a group of three judges (a bit like Dragons’ Den) in a classroom where they assessed our work, and we spoke to them about what we planned on doing with our new game. Thanks to our team spirt and the fantastic leadership by Grace S (G) we managed to get to the final 4 teams out of 24. We then had to present our game to our whole year group, plus the judges that came to watch. Some people were nervous going up on stage, but as a group we stood strong and presented our work as if it was still only the three judges.

After an amazing performance we came in as runners up and placed 2^nd overall in our year. Reflecting on the day I believe it improved my teamwork, leadership and social skills by trying something different with new people.  I really enjoyed this challenge as I love all aspects of gaming and technology.

I would like to take this time to thank everybody that put this amazing opportunity together for us as a year group and hope there will be other days like this in the future.