A NATIONWIDE competition that develops enterprise skills in school pupils by giving them a ten pound note has opened for business for another year.

Youngsters from across the North West can sign up online to take part in Tenner, which challenges pupils to be creative with £10 to generate as much money as possible in just one month.

The hugely successful competition will be run again throughout the month of March – as a new survey shows that 86 per cent of young people who took part last year felt they developed at least one enterprise skill.

According to the official evaluation returns the Tenner competition, run by Young Enterprise, the UK’s largest enterprise education charity, saw 15,676 pupils from 342 schools across the UK turn an average profit of £102, with the top 50 teams making a profit of £16,260. A push is now being made to increase participation in the north west.

The aim of the programme is to encourage young people taking part to ‘take a Tenner, make a difference – and give back’.

While a major part of the fun comes from the thrill of making money the challenge strongly encourages participants to do so while improving life in their local communities.

Using a series of web-based questions posed to teachers and pupils, researchers found that the biggest percentage increase in skills were in teamwork and understanding of entrepreneurship. This rose by 3.2 per cent and 4.9 per cent respectively compared to before the competition. The next biggest increase in skills was communication, which went up by 3.1per cent.

Teachers said the main reason they were keen to enter their pupils into the challenge was the ‘real’ rather than purely academic experience that Tenner offered to their students (76%). The next most important reason was that Tenner is a great way to increase their students’ engagement in school, chosen by 16 per cent.

CEO of Young Enterprise, Michael Mercieca, said: “Tenner is a huge hit for three reasons. It’s free – because Young Enterprise provides them with the Tenner, it is easy because teachers get great support through our website and research shows that young people learn new skills they couldn’t get from academic lessons.

“Tenner works because, in an education system that concentrates too much on teaching and testing, it helps students learn crucial employability skills while having fun.”

Registration for schools looking to participate in Tenner 2014 is via the Tenner website www.Tenner.org.uk.

Entries close on February 28, with the competition running from Monday March 3 until March 31.

For more information visit: Tenner.org.uk or contact Juliet Grant: julietg@pha-media.com, 0207 4400 362.