LionHeart Final

THE LIONHEART CHALLENGE REGIONAL FINAL, November 21st

Each year in November, along with nearly 300.000  students  across every region of England,  our Year 10s take part in The LionHeart Challenge, an Enterprise competition which opens for students a true window into what the real working world is, allowing them the opportunity to meet and work with real life Business Experts.

Each year, our school champion team competes with other London winning teams at the LionHeart Challenge Regional Finals, in prestigious and high-profile venues such as Leeds Metropolitan University, Harrow School, or the Emirates Stadium. In the past, we have regularly won key category awards for the most effective team or the best proposal research, already quite an achievement in itself.

Until last Monday, when our champion team, now Y11s, embarked on a journey to the listed Chapter Hall in Westminster, to compete against fellow winning teams from right across the regions of London, the South East, the South West and the East, in an exciting, dynamic and highly competitive day. Our students found the Regional Final Challenge theme quite challenging this year, as their task was to conceptualise, design and create an achievable community action project which would deliver a ground-breaking impact for a chosen citizen group within their town or community. This project needed to take the form of a "legacy" project.

Students were challenged to produce a detailed master plan and business proposal along with a virtual product prototype, using leading edge software technology, all of which assessed by and presented to a panel of regional judges comprising of Business professionals from a broad spectrum of industry and commerce, in an 8 slide maximum and two minute long PowerPoint presentation! In the time the students had available, this was truly phenomenal. Well, phenomenal, our students were, working effectively as a team to discuss which ideas would work, as well as sharing out the tasks efficiently, playing to everyone's strengths. They had to solve problems along the way, stretch their initiative and really work hard to pull it together. Their humble talent and determined resilience could not go unrewarded, and they won a key category award for the best financial package, together with the title of London Regional Champions.  They did not win it as individuals but as a team, as St. Martins-in-the-field High School for Girls. Next month, they will proudly represent St Martin's at the LionHeart Challenge National Final.

I felt immensely proud of our girls, and we wish them every success for the National Finals.

Mlle Bajer

Work-Related Learning co-ordinator