Casterton pupils turn down £100,000 for schoolwork

4:24pm Monday 6th July 2009

By Ellie Hargreaves

A GROUP of schoolgirls who designed a boardgame to make maths fun have been offered £100,000 for their invention - and turned the cash down.

The Casterton School pupils were told by business experts that their classroom creation was worth more so are setting up their own company and commanding five figure sums for shares.

The 15 budding businesswomen - aged just 16 and 17 - came up with the idea for QBits as part of their Young Enterprise course and have already won a Daily Telegraph media award for their efforts to promote it.

After months of market research and mega-bucks offers from manufacturers wanting to buy the rights, the girls have now signed a deal with an investor who is paying £35,000 for 5,000 of the strategic boardgames to be produced in China.

“It’s all very exciting,” said teacher Charlotte Compton. “We are looking at a situation where these girls could be leaving school or university to become directors of their own, global company.”

The project started with a simple homework task when the students were sent home to think up ways to help people with numeracy. When Austrian pupil Tiziana Schuster, 16, returned to school with a boardgame concept, her teachers were taken aback.

“it was such a simple idea that we all wondered why we’d never thought of it - but I suppose that’s the way with the best inventions,” laughed Mrs Compton. “All the other girls had great ideas how to develop the idea and it’s been a great team effort to get us to where we are now.”

With help from their business advisor Chris Humphreys, who runs a picture-framing shop in Bentham, the classmates began developing the idea, thinking of names, designing logos and researching how it could sell on the open market.

Kirkby Lonsdale pupil Eloise Slack, 17, was made managing director of the team, while Staveley’s Polly Williams, 16, landed herself the job of operations director and Kendal’s Beth Mason, 17, became company secretary.

Together with their friends - who took on IT, finance and marketing roles - they produced a prototype, copyrighted the product and registered their trade-name ‘Qube Games’. They even filmed an advert and contacted record label EMI for permission to use the Huey Lewis track It’s Hip to be Square as their theme tune.

“I can’t believe how far we’ve come because it only took me about half an hour to come up with the initial idea,” said Tiziana.

Eloise added: “I hate maths but I think it’s a great product and a great selling opportunity. With the right advice and determination I think we can be really succesful.”

The girls have created junior and genious versions and plan electronic and foreign language versions in the future. Once the games are shipped over from China they plan to send samples to schools and department stores - who could sell them for £14.99.

“When Imagination Games told us they wanted to buy the game outright for £100,000 we realised it could be worth a lot more so we took advice and decided to market the game ourselves,” added Mrs Compton. “The girls’ A levels are their priority but it may just be that when they finish their education, Qube Games could be a global success.”