IOSA Apprentice 2011

Red Nose smoothie wins but Alfie.... you’re fired!

A smoothie drink based around Red Nose day has won the first challenge at the school’s enterprise competition. The Isle of Sheppey Academy launched its Apprentice contest on Friday.

Each week two teams will be given a task and at the end of the week will face the boardroom where a pupil from the losing side will be fired by a panel of judges. There are 21 pupils taking part this year and their first challenge was to design and make a smoothie from scratch and produce a TV advert to go with it.

Last week’s team were Jingle Jangle and Barbie and Ken. Although the judges thought the Jingle Jangle’s smoothie tasted better, they decided their advert let them down and Barbie and Ken won with their drink called Comedy Punch which was designed with Red Nose Day in mind.

Co-ordinator Caron Kerr said the winning team’s advert was great and they had gone to a lot of trouble – even getting the permission of a Sheerness shop to film it in.

Alfie Chapman, 14, was fired as the judges felt that although he did have something to do with the task, he didn’t really stand up for himself and couldn’t give a reason why he shouldn’t be fired. The judges were last year’s winner, Kyle Mullings, 13, Martyn Robinson-Slater of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, Cllr Ken Pughm the academy’s finance director Jamie Hutchinson and Brian Reddington of the Parents’ Forum which is organising the contest. This week’s task was given to the children live via Skype from Ginster’s education officer. They have been asked to produce a marketing campaign for pasties aimed at overseas visitors to the London 2012 Olympics.

Judging will be on Friday where at least one more pupil will be fired. This year’s apprentice will get £500 and there are prizes of £250, £125 and £75 for three runners up.