ACS Egham becomes the first school in the UK to be accepted to the BSG initiative, business@school.
The business@school is the educational initiative of the international consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG). It was founded in 1998 in Germany and every year provides the opportunity to more than 1,000 students to learn about business, helps them to acquire key skills for their future professional life, and awakens their entrepreneurial spirit. Students are supported by their teachers and 400 professionals from more than 20 partner companies and BCG who volunteer as coaches.
My name is Gema Quintanilla and this is my second year at ACS Egham teaching Business Management. Having run business@school for nine years at Munich International School, I launched it as a Jaguars in Action activity for the first time this year, with support from Mr Guy Edmunds.
There are currently 22 Grade 11 students taking part in the program divided into four teams. The program runs over the course of the school year and has three phases. In phase one students analyse a large company, in phase two students analyse a small business while in phase three students have the opportunity to develop their own business idea and prepare a business plan. Each phase ends with a presentation to a jury panel who select the winning team. The winning team from phase three will have the opportunity to present their idea and compete with other international schools in the international final in Vienna on 13 June 2023.
Our students are mentored by BCG consultants, professionals from Oracle and B@S alumni, who guide the students’ analysis, provide feedback on their presentations and enable them to build networks and contacts that will support their future career.
business@school is a great opportunity for us. What makes the project even better is the guidance and mentoring from professionals. We had bi-weekly Zoom meetings with our mentor, Philip, a sales executive from Oracle - during which we received priceless advice and mentoring.
The program also builds up relations with the ACS Egham community and partnerships. Phase I presentation took place on 25 November and the four teams presented the analysis of their selected companies in front of a jury panel composed of four experienced businessmen who are also ACS parents: Doug Frost, Rafael Gonzalez, Peter Kenyon and Marco Reategui.
It is great that the school has taken the initiative to offer this business@school programme to students interested in learning more about business and understanding what is involved in starting and running a company. Many of today's most successful and well-known businesses were started by young people with a passion. In the programme so far, it was good to see how the students were able to analyse the key success factors and assess the financial performance of existing well-known companies. I look forward to seeing how they apply what they have learned to developing their own business ideas.”
Students are currently working on Phase II analysing small local businesses. Thanks to the ACS partnership links, Jane Quelch has arranged for students to analyse two businesses that work with the school, Phoenix Football Academy and Adventure Lifesigns.
The program provides hands-on experience on businesses and develops students’ business presentation skills, teamwork skills and entrepreneurship and I hope one of our teams wins the international final in Vienna!
I think it’s great for students to get an early opportunity to study a real business and apply their learnings from the Business Studies course. It’s a tough challenge in the early months of the course but it’s a great opportunity to engage with parents who have many years of corporate experience to share.
For further information regarding this program visit https://www.businessatschool.de/en/landing-page
The first months working with the ACS Egham students in the business@School program have been a real joy. The energy and curiosity the students bring to the project is remarkable. In the first phase, which just concluded a few weeks back, they analysed some of the most complex companies out there uncovering interesting insights about their strategy and how they operate, thereby learning a lot about business in general, but also about the ever increasing importance of sustainability in business. But business@school is not only about learning about the business world, the students also showed great progress in learning how to work in a team, preparing presentations, and ultimately presenting and discussing their important findings with a group of experts. I’m very much looking forward to continue the work next year.
If you would like to take part in the jury panel or if you are able to support this programme, please email me gquintanilla@acs-schools.com
GEMA QUINTANILLA IS THE PROGRAM COORDINATOR FOR BUSINESS@SCHOOL AT ACS INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL EGHAM
