WHIZZKIDS from Dorchester flew the flag for British enterprise with a trip to Paris.

The Thomas Hardye School students have just returned from the UK Trade and Investment (UKTI)-sponsored visit to the French capital.

A team of three pupils won the trip, which included a meeting with the British ambassador to France, after designing a product with international sales potential.

The pupils took part in last autumn’s International Enterprise and Entrepre-neurship Competition, run by UKTI, which aimed to encourage entrepreneurship in schools and find the exporters of the future. Year 11 French students at the school formed six teams, each creating a ‘company’, and attended exporting workshops and received support to develop their own export business.

The winning team – Informatika Accessoires – comprised Dominic Himsworth, Edward Godfrey and Thomas Wall.

They won the prize for their design of an ‘i-clip’ gadget, an acrylic clip which, when attached to a laptop computer transformer, allows cables to be wound around it to reduce tangling. Ursula Oliver and Katie Holmes also won places in a parallel competition for T-shirt logo designs.

The winning team met UKTI staff based at the British embassy in Paris.

They talked with commercial officers, business development managers and marketing and PR staff.

The students also met Sir Peter Westmacott, the ambassador to France.

The project was supported by the South West Regional Language Network and Flybe.

Students focused on the competition as a way of learning business French.

Philada Rogers and James Piriou from the South West Regional Language Network gave presentations, and Steve Parrott from Flybe talked about his company’s policy of rewarding employees with language skills and qualifications.

UKTI’s Nick Field also went in to the school to speak with the pupils.

He also worked with them to help them to develop their products and accompanied them to Paris.