On the 9th July 2024, a thousand students from schools across the country will be competing to be crowned The National Careers Challenge Champions, which will see them joining an esteemed Hall of Fame with 26 previous National Champions!
The National Careers Challenge in partnership with NatWest Thrive (TNCC) is in its 12th year of engaging, inspiring and motivating young people and is now the UK’s largest careers and enterprise competition. This year, over 50,000 students have engaged with TNCC, taking the overall figure of engagement to 600,000 students – a figure that The Inspirational Learning Group (TILG) is incredibly proud of.
The award-winning flagship school delivery programme allows young people to develop the skills required to make informed decisions about their futures through completing real-life business challenges set by some of the UK’s most innovative companies. TNCC would not be possible without the challenge sponsors and we are thrilled to continue our relationship with Air Products and NatWest, who have sponsored our Year 7 and 9 challenges and welcome JCB and Atkins Réalis as sponsors for our Year 8 and 10 challenges respectively.
The highlight of each academic year is the TNCC finals, which sees the winning team from each secondary school competing to be crowned The National Careers Challenge 2024 Champions. The event will see a thousand students presenting their business pitches, complete with lifesize prototypes and props, to a morning panel of industry judges in a “Dragons Den” style pitch, before the shortlisted finalists present their ideas to an audience of 1,500 made up of students, business guests and representatives from each of our sponsors in our afternoon Grand Finals event hosted by TV magician, presenter and TikTok star Ben Hanlin.
In addition to the thousand budding entrepreneurs from the UK in attendance, TILG are also welcoming back students from China to the finals following their first visit to the TNCC finals last year. The team is thrilled to be welcoming 80 students from SKT+Education who will compete to be crowned International Champions following in the footsteps of Shanghai Baoshan WFLS in 2023.
Highlights from our 2022 finals can be viewed here https://bit.ly/3XfPDMT.
Previous finals have been held at prestigious venues such as The ICC in Birmingham and Wembley Arena and this year, the TNCC finals will be returning to our 2016 venue, Doncaster Racecourse.
Co-founder of TNCC Ben Dyer said, “We are delighted to be returning to Doncaster Racecourse for this year’s TNCC finals. We last held the Grand Finals here in 2016 following the announcement that we had engaged with 100,000 students. Fast forward to today, we are now market leaders in enterprise education and are incredibly proud of every single student who has engaged with our challenge over the last 12 years. The challenge is not just about winning – although we believe strongly in the competitive element! It is about harnessing skills not easily taught in the classroom and providing students with meaningful employer encounters and better equipping students for the world of work. This year’s final promises to be an event not to be missed and we are so excited to watch the students’ pitches and to ultimately crown the 2024 champions”.
Last year’s winning Year 9 team from Altrincham Girls Grammar School said, “Last year’s final was incredible, it left me in awe of the talent and skill of people from Year 7s to Year 10s from around the country! The effort we’d put into our pitch was definitely worth it, even if we hadn’t won, though the win was also jaw-dropping, with the applause from everyone in the audience and the golden confetti from behind us! I’m very glad to have had the experience and wish any competitors this year good luck!”.
TILG remains committed to playing our part in providing meaningful engagement with employers and continuing to expand our range of challenges. Young people will always remain at the heart of what we do at TILG as will the aim of enabling all young people to develop the skills required for their future world of work.
