Preston Manor High School

Case study information

Students at Preston Manor successfully launched their own community website in just one day during Enterprise Week 2008. The school was looking for a one day activity that could be run in teams consisting of students ranging from Year 8 to Year 12 and that could be built upon year after year.  The solution was the LocalBiz Project Enterprise Day Programme.

The Sixth Form supported the programme throughout the day, helping us to achieve our goals, through mentoring the students, videoing the day, and providing feedback for some of the day’s competitive elements.

Sarah Creasy, Deputy Head said “Our new community website provides an ideal opportunity through which the school, local businesses and the local community can work closer together.   The majority of the students have put themselves forward to be interviewed for the various roles needed to develop the community website further as an extra-curricula activity this year, with a view to incorporating it into our formal timetable next year.”

Under the new leadership of Melanie Breen, the programme has moved forward and has some ambitious plans for 2010 including:

• Developing specific links with selected local businesses with the community
• Developing some video content involving these businesses, including filming and editing through the media resources at Brent City Learning Centre.

Trish Madigan, Project Manager at Brent CLC commented “The great thing is that I worked with some of the students on a film project last year, so they do have a bit of film-making experience. It would be good if we could match the local businesses we intend to film, with the interests of young people – so they can be treated almost like clients of the students.