TAVISTOCK College has been awarded funds through Devon County Council's Enterprise in Schools grant programme, to help encourage entrepreneurship.

A large number of innovative proposals were received from across Devon and Tavistock College was one of nine which was successful.

As a result of being awarded funding Tavistock College was able to set up its Tavistock Learning Trust Real Business Experience.

The experience is an exciting enterprise competition called the Trust Enterprise Festival for Year 6 pupils from the college's Learning Trust Primary Schools and a team of Year 7 students from Tavistock College.

The festival challenges the youngsters to tackle a real business task, set for each school by a business or organisation from within the local community.

Gary King, assistant principal for Tavistock College, said: 'This is real world learning at its most engaging and a fantastic opportunity for students to gain an insight into real world problems businesses in the local community are working on solving.

'It provides a chance to develop enterprise skills, problem solving strategies and working collaboratively as a team — skills that will ultimately give students a competitive edge in today's job market.'

Schools taking part in the challenge were introduced to its business or organisation at the beginning of January. Together they worked on a three stage approach: investigate/ explore the problem, prove evidence of all work undertaken, and present solutions.

All the hard work by the youngsters will culminate in the experience festival at Tavistock College on February 6, from 9.30am to 12.30pm. Each team will present their initial problem and solutions to the audience and judging panel, from various industry sectors, in a three minute Power Point presentation.