The fifth series of The Apprentice is reaching its finale but who’s going to win?

Is it likely to be someone who’s been project manager the most times? Maybe it’ll be someone Sir Alan knows well because they’ve been in the boardroom many times? Or maybe being in the boardroom puts candidates at a disadvantage? Who do you think Sir Alan will hire?

Watch a trailer for the current series of The Apprentice

Each week, Sir Alan sets the two teams a task. The winning team is rewarded but a member of the losing team gets fired!

More details about how The Apprentice works are here

In the last series, Lucinda was on the winning team eight times! More times than anyone else, yet she finished fifth.

watch highlights from series four

In the series before that, Tre was on the winning team seven times and he finished fourth.

watch highlights from series three

In the second series, Ruth Badger was only on the winning team three times and was taken into the boardroom four times but she finished second!

You will be given information about all of the candidates that have taken part in The Apprentice. Your job is to look for patterns, to decide what makes a winner and to decide who you think Sir Alan is likely to hire at the end of this series!

Up2d8 mathsThe Apprentice

Teacher Notes

The Apprentice

Introduction: The BBC’s The Apprentice follows the search for a new apprentice for Sir Alan Sugar’s business empire. Candidates are split

into two teams and put through a series of tasks, mainly involving making a larger profit than the other team. After each task, a member of thelosing team is ‘fired’ and the process repeats over a number of weeks until just one apprentice is hired. This Up2d8 invites students to look atthe data from the previous four series of The Apprentice alongside data for the current series and to make and justify a prediction about whothey think will win.

Content objectives: • Calculate statistics and select those most appropriate to the problem, or which address the questions posed• review interpretations and results of a statistical enquiry on the basis of discussions; communicate these interpretations and results using

selected tables, graphs and diagrams• interpret results involving uncertainty and prediction• pose questions and make convincing arguments to justify generalisations or solutions; recognise the impact of constraints or

assumptions.

Process objectives: These will depend on the amount of freedom you allow your class with the activity. It might be worth considering howyou’re going to deliver the activity and highlighting the processes that this will allow on the diagram below:

Activity: Students are led through a series of slides introducing the premise and rules of The Apprentice. Students (probably working in pairs orsmall groups) can then be introduced to the statistics from previous series and asked to look for patterns in the successful candidates. A classdiscussion about whether it is useful to build a relationship with Sir Alan through frequent visits to the boardroom might be illustrated by referringto Claire Young from last year’s series who was on the losing team six times and was taken into the boardroom five of those six times yet madeit to the final of the series. This may also be a useful way (depending on the level of your class) of introducing some slightly more complexanalysis of the statistics such as percentage of times on the losing team that result in being taken into the boardroom or percentage of wins asproject manager. The aim of the activity is for students to make and justify a prediction based on the data from the previous years.

Differentiation: You may decide to change the level of challenge for your group. To make the task easier you could consider:• adding scaffolding to the investigation by suggesting key statistics or providing more ‘useful’ statistics such as percentage of times on the

winning team or percentage of times in the boardroom• offering a writing frame to help structure a written report (if you choose to ask for one)• offering less data or offer the data in a more structured way that leads students through the analysis• asking students to carry out particular types of analysis such as ‘who had the highest percentage of time on the losing team in series

one?’

To make the task more complex you could consider:• scaffolding less, asking the students to use the data to set and explore their own hypothesis• discussing the limitations of the data as it’s presented, and invite students to manipulate the data in a more useful way• inviting the students to develop a graphical representation of the data (consider the way that the data is presented here)

Outcomes: You may want to consider what the outcome of the task will be and share this with students according to their ability. This tasklends itself to a written report detailing both what the group found and how they found it. This might be presented as a poster or a longer writtenpiece. You might also ask each group to present their findings to the rest of the class.

Working in groups: This activity lends itself to paired or small group work and, by encouraging students to work collaboratively, it is likely thatyou will allow them access to more of the key processes than if they were to work individually. You will need to think about how your class will work on this task. Will they work in pairs, threes or larger groups? If pupils are not used toworking in groups in mathematics, you may wish to spend some time talking about their rules and procedures to maximise the effectiveness andengagement of pupils in group work (You may wish to look at the SNS Pedagogy and practice pack Unit 10: Guidance for Groupwork). Youmay wish to encourage the groups to delegate different areas of responsibility to specific group members.

Assessment: You may wish to consider how you will assess the task and how you will record your assessment. This could include developingthe assessment criteria with your class. You might choose to focus on the content objectives or on the process objectives. You might decide thatthis activity lends itself to comment only marking or to student self-assessment. If you decide that the outcome is to be a presentation or aposter then you may find that this lends itself to peer assessment.

Probing questions: Initially students could brainstorm issues to consider. You may wish to introduce some points into the discussion whichmight include:• What happens if someone is on the losing team only twice but is taken into the boardroom both times? Is that better or worse than being

on the losing team seven times and being taken into the boardroom three times?• The interviews (held in week 11) provide an opportunity for Sir Alan to choose two (or more) people to put through to the final. Is there a

particular type of person that gets fired after the interviews? Or, that is likely to get through the interview?• Is it better to volunteer to be a project manager early in the series, or should candidates stay in the background?

You will need: The PowerPoint display which you might read through with your class to set the scene at the beginning of the activity. There are just threeslides:

The first slide introduces the idea of The Apprentice with a link to a trailer for the current series and a second link to the rules of the contest if your students haven’t seen it.

The second slide introduces some of the contestants from previous series and some of the more unusual statistics relating to them. There are links to highlights of series three and four in which these candidates feature.

The final slide sets the task, inviting students to predict who they think Sir Alan will hire.

You might like to give your students access to the internet so that they can find the most up to date data about the results of the recent tasks.Online access to the Excel spreadsheet containing the data might also be useful to allow students to manipulate and interpret the data without having to carry out many repetitive calculations.

Up2d8 mathsThe Apprentice

Student resource sheetsThere are no student resource sheets for this Up2d8 maths resource.