At Māruawai College, junior students opened up stalls with goods for sale last Wednesday afternoon, including jerky, baked goods, mugs and tote bags.
Deputy principal and junior campus head Amy Ritchie said the event had been in the works for a long time.
The students had been learning about business, markets and what to buy.
"Then they had to create a product or something to sell, create a stall and hopefully make some money."
The response from the students had been amazing, Mrs Ritchie said.
"We’ve got some budding entrepreneurs.
"The chance to make some money probably made it more fun, but they’ve been able to use their passions and strengths to make their stalls."
The experience was realistic and reflected real life business practices, including applying for loans, advertising their product idea and operating the stall.
"At the start of the term we had a social to fundraise.
"What that did was allow us to have a pool of money that students could apply [to] for a loan to create their business.
"Some of them had a knockback and had to leave and revise their product and come back to me, so it’s a bit of a learning curve."
Mrs Ritchie said giving the learning a tangible outcome led to better results.
Year 9 commerce students judged the stalls against criteria such as the finances, the sustainability of the idea, realism and uniqueness.
