Schoolboy's playground business earns him suspension threat

Tommie Rose, a 15-year-old from Salford, has made an impressive £14,000 running a playground business in Builie High School.

He even employed two other pupils to help him run his business empire and paid them £5.50 a day. He has been rewarded for his entrepreneurial efforts with the threat of suspension from school.

The Mirror reported that Rose made the cash by smuggling in chocolate, crisps and fizzy drink every day and then selling them to schoolmates. He has amassed this small fortune over the past three years.

However, the school has a strict healthy eating policy, which this flagrantly breaches, so the head teacher isn't impressed and has threatened to suspend him if he continues. Rose was suspended for 10 days from his old school, the Oasis Academy in Salford in 2011 for the same thing.

Article continues below

Is this fair?

On the one hand, Rose told the newspaper that he is earning £60-£70 a day, which he is putting aside to pay the fees for a business degree. His parents say there's no way they would otherwise be able to afford university fees, so this is the kind of creative problem-solving that should be applauded.
%VIRTUAL-ArticleSidebar-jobs-guide%
Certainly he's not the first: some of our greatest entrepreneurs started their business at school. Lord Alan Sugar used to sell photographic film to his friends at school, and Sir Richard Branson started up a magazine while at school - using the school phone box in order to call potential advertisers. He was so inspired by his experiences that he recently set up a scheme for primary school children - lending them £5 for a month to see if they could turn a profit.

On the other hand, Rose is clearly breaking school rules James Inman, Headteacher at Buile Hill Visual Arts College, told the Manchester Evening News: "We admire this pupil's entrepreneurship but school is not the place to set-up a black market of fizzy drinks, sweets and chocolates. We have extremely high standards and with our healthy eating policy we don't allow isotonic drinks, fizzy drinks and large amounts of sweets for the good of our children. Our high standards are set out to pupils and their parents at the start of the school year."

But what do you think? Should he be banned from selling sweets?

Entrepreneurs on AOL Money

Entrepreneur moves into a garden shed: to pursue her dreams

Entrepreneur builds toll road to bypass road closed by landslip

Loom bands have made their inventor £80 million