Baby economics

How – and why – ten-year-olds are being taught to run a business

There’s an excited buzz in the Year 6 class of Yeading Junior School, in outer London. The ten-year-olds recently set up a polytunnel in the school grounds, and now they’re deciding which vegetables to plant in the new polythene greenhouse. Their teacher, Mrs Taylor, is cheerful but firm: ‘When the vegetables are grown, we’ll sell them for profit. Let’s work out how much we should charge for different vegetables. What should we consider?’

Hands shoot up. Bespectacled Alan notes that the more seeds we sow, the more money we make. Mansoor points out we’ll have to calculate the price of each seed, as seeds are sold in packets of hundreds. Another voice pipes up that we can’t price the vegetables too high, or nobody will buy them. Other issues are discussed — what will be the cost of total outlay, of compost, fertiliser, pots? What if some seeds don’t germinate? Why might it be cleverer to charge £1.99