The inter-branch app fair
Every branch sends its best apps to one event a year.
Who this suits. A group that already runs inter-branch sport or debate and knows what that does for the place.
- Could start
- One year in, once enough branches have something to send
- What it asks of the school
- Moderate
How it runs
Each branch runs its own selection and sends its best few apps. Judging is on whether it works and whether anyone wants it, not on how clever it looks.
Because every app is live at its own address, judges and parents open them on their own phones during the event instead of watching a presentation about them.
It gives the whole year a deadline. Teachers report that the fair does more for participation than anything they say in class.
What each side puts in
The school provides
- One day and one venue a year, which the group already knows how to do
- A selection round in each branch
- A few judges from outside the group, which matters more than it sounds
The school gets
- A group-wide event with something real at the end of it
- Photographs, press and an admissions story, once a year, reliably
- The competitive pressure that makes twenty branches take it seriously
The students get
- A deadline and an audience
- Their app opened by strangers on strangers' phones
- Something that gets said out loud in front of the whole group
How it is paid for
The event costs the group what any inter-branch event costs. The building itself is already paid for by whichever model each branch runs — the fair adds a reason, not a budget.
There is no price on this page, and that is on purpose. What this costs to run depends on how it is taught — short exercises shared between a few students cost a fraction of what long solo projects cost — and we would rather measure that in your school than quote a number we cannot stand behind. Whatever follows a pilot is agreed in writing before the pilot begins.
The catch
A fair with nothing good in it is worse than no fair. It needs enough branches running the programme properly to fill a hall, so this is the last thing to start and not the first. Run it too early and you have taught twenty principals that the programme does not produce much.
Every model on the main page carries one of these, and the same page lists what we have not built yet. Everything we have not finished across the whole product is on our trust page.
Start with one class, one term, free.
Whichever model you end up running, the first step is the same: one branch, one teacher, one term, at no cost.
Talk to us about a pilot