PUPILS at St Bernard's Catholic Grammar School have been facing dragons - in a bid to show their budding business skills.

Year 10 pupils at the Langley Road school split into teams and formed 19 businesses of their own, before making their pitch in front 'dragons' in the school's own version of the famous television show.

A total of 76 students took part and sixth form A level students acted as the dragons in the heats, which were watched by teachers and pupils.

For the finals though a special 'dragon' did the judging. He was ex-A level student at the school Ilijah Gibbs now studying law at Nottingham University, who came back specially for the event.

He joined Olivia Crosby to make the difficult final decision.

In the end the two sets of winners coming joint first were the team of pupils who called their company Envo and the team that called theirs Slurpo.

For Envo Monica Oliver, James Crosby and Holly Henshaw came up with the idea of converting harmful waste products into crude oil to provide energy to power houses. Their 'invention' was called the Binvo bin.

The Slurpo team members were Alysso Sotello, Joanne Liu, Erin Oliver and Arthur Pintocame who up with a product called STIZZ, a resaleable can for keeping drinks fizzy and fresh.

Runners-up were the Place Pet Zone company team which came second, while the team which called its company Startech promoting 'the pen that works' came third.

Visiting dragon Ilijah had parting advice for pupils.

He said: "Professionalism and the ability to ‘think on your feet’ are the most important factors. It’s one of the evident traits that people pick up on regardless of how good your product is in comparison to your competitors.."

It has been an exciting few days for the school.

Its pupils also won the Young Enterprise (Year 12) best Trade Stand prize at the Young Enterprise Trade Fair which was held at the Windsor Royal Shopping centre on Saturday.