Hello everyone, this is Stephen and Jun from Year 10. We are a part of the Enterprise Class. Being the first class to try the Enterprise IGCSE, we didn’t know much of what we were going into except some of the basics of the class. After almost a year of being in the Enterprise class, we can say we don’t regret our choice. One of the things that differentiate the class from other subjects was that they allowed us to run the school snack shop by ourselves and figure it with the help of Mr Nathan, the teacher. Jun and I will be telling you about our class, our snack shop and some other information.
The purpose of the enterprise-class is to help potential entrepreneurs learn the basics of running a business. The topics that we have done so far have been What is Enterprise?, different types of businesses, entrepreneurial skills, risks, negotiation, and finance. It is a great course to do if you want to run a business in the future, and it can also teach you some important life skills such as negotiation and finance.
At the beginning of the year, we had a hard time trying to get the business started. All we had was what the previous owner had left — a broken cabinet and an old fridge! We did not have any money to start and we were desperately in need of money, so Mr Kevin (the Principal) loaned us 5000 Baht from the school, which we were able to pay back in a couple of months. That money was so important for us and it had given us hope. That’s how we started the business and we really appreciated it.
Throughout the year, it has been a challenge keeping up with the snack shop at times. We have had our highs and lows, with multiple obstacles to overcome. Each month it seems as if a new challenge comes up which has to do with the new topic we are learning in Enterprise to make the snack shop better. The work of keeping the snack shop running it has taught us a lot about running a business effectively and managing one.
After 8 months of working at the snack shop, we accumulated an amount that made us decide to give everyone dividends for our work. Before splitting the money, we had to decide how much retained earnings to keep in the business so that we could pay for our products and keep everything running. When we figured that out, we split the money evenly between the 16 people in our class. In the end, we calculated that we should give 700 Baht to each person for the dividends.
We have been happy to study IGCSE Enterprise with Mr Nathan and will be glad to continue learning next year as we start our individual and group projects for our official coursework!