School celebrates double export competition success

27 November 2008

Hayle Community School’s participation in National Enterprise Week triumphed last week with two exciting announcements at the finals of the Passport to Export International Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Competition.

The winners of the Passport to Export Competition with the partners

Hayle School, a specialist language and business enterprise college, learnt the surprise news that its Passport to Export Competition, now in its third year, has won a 2008 Business Language Champion Highly Commended Award from CILT, the National Centre for Languages.

The evening also saw this year’s winning student team “company” named as Crunchy Cool comprising year 10 pupils, Alex, Chelsie and Abi whose first prize will be an all expenses paid “business trip” to Spain.

The award winning Passport to Export Competition is staged annually through the collaborative effort of Hayle Community School, Cornwall Education Business Partnership, UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) and the Regional Language Network South West (RLN SW) and supported by Flybe.

This year, four teams from the school’s language groups rose to the challenge to devise ideas for a product or service suitable for export. The teams made presentations to UKTI business professionals at the British Embassy in Madrid via a video conferencing link. The link was also transmitted to a large audience in the school’s main hall comprising of parents, teachers and VIP guests, including the Town Mayor, Cllr John Coombe, Mayoress, Mrs Lorna Coombe, Rose Brooman, UKTI, Jim McKenna, Penwith District Council chief executive and Adrian Ash, from The Specialist School Trust.

Winning team Crunchy Cool came up with the idea for a lunch and salad cooler in a round plastic container with an inner cooling compartment and an outer lunch/salad compartment. Cooling is achieved by a chemical reaction.

Judges were very impressed with all the four company product ideas and found the judging a difficult task. The final decision rested on Crunchy Cool’s suitability for export to Spain and the good research that the winning team had carried out.

John Topham, director of the school’s language college was thrilled with the outcome. “To hear last night that we have just won a Highly Commended Business Language Champion Award from CILT was just tremendous news for everyone and a fitting tribute to all the organisations involved.

“Each year we are impressed by the serious approach taken by our Year 10 and Year 11 pupils to the “Passport to Export” challenge and with their imaginative “product” ideas for export.

“The aim of the competition is to show students why it is essential to be able to communicate in languages other than English and how by gaining foreign language skills, they are more likely to be able to find future work within Cornwall’s export economy.

“The four “company” teams taking part in the competition finals performed really well. Congratulations to Crunchy Cool for the winning idea and presentation.”

Gwyneth Leonard, RLN SW manager, who made the Business Language Highly Commended Award announcement at the event said: “This is well deserved and comes on top of the college winning a coveted European Language Award for languages earlier this year. Hayle School consistently strives to make language learning great fun and the Passport to Export competition is one such example. The relationship this language and enterprise college nurtures with local and regional businesses provides potentially great future opportunities for its language students.”

The four finalist companies taking part in the Passport To Export competition were, Crunchy Cool, Rainbow Connections, Uni.Co and Hola Sol.