Best Company in Lothian Award 2011-2012

The Lothian YES Area Board was disappointed at the low numbers attending the training events in 2010-2011. Also disappointing was the fact that 14 companies did not complete the YES year, for one reason or another. The Board was pleased with the performance of those companies that took part in the postponed Christmas Market.

For 2011-2012, the Board has decided to operate a new scoring system for the “Best Company in Lothian” award. Details are given below and the Board hopes that Link Teachers and Business Advisers will support this initiative.

The competition element of the company programme is still very much secondary to the students’ learning experience. The Board’s objective is to encourage and reward participation in the whole programme but we felt that the previous allocation of points placed a disproportionate importance on some of the activities at the end of the year. We have spent a great deal of time over the summer reviewing how we allocate points to the various stages of the Young Enterprise year and ultimately we want to reward those who can demonstrate their learning throughout the process. All four elements of the competition (Christmas market, company report, interview and final presentation) have now been given equal importance. We also feel the students overall experience will be greatly enhanced by having at least one representative attend each of the training sessions so we have allocated a small number of bonus points for companies who are present at these events. For the 2011-2012 year the points will be allocated as follows:

1st Training     -     5 Points

2nd Training     -     5 Points

3rd Training     -     5 Points

Christmas Market     -     25 Points

Company Report     -     25 Points

Interview     -     25 Points

Presentation     -     25 Points

Total     -     115 Points

We will send out details of how each element will be marked in due course but we wanted to flag this slight change at an early stage. To reiterate the point, the students’ learning experience remains the key objective of the company programme and we hope the changes we have introduced to the scoring will better support that.