Here's how the competition judge viewed schools' efforts

BELMONT COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOL: I liked the creative and original idea of presenting the report through the form of a building, as this provides the opportunity to show the inter-relationship between departments in a graphic manner.

DURHAM CHORISTERS SCHOOL: This is a well researched and presented report, very pleasing to read, with concise and good descriptions of departmental roles. The team established a good framework of meetings and allocation of responsibilities to meet the challenge.

DURHAM COMMUNITY BUSINESS COLLEGE (team 1): The team took the unusual step of visiting a business environment first by visiting Walkers Crisps at Peterlee. The originality of this approach gave the team an advantage in seeing the practicalities of departmental activity before examining source materials, and they followed this up with a meeting to discuss and distribute these requirements.

DURHAM COMMUNITY BUSINESS COLLEGE (team 2): This report was disappointing. Although the team met beforehand and included a partner organisation in the discussion, there have clearly been subsequent difficulties in putting the report together, with three sections - sales, purchasing and customer services - absent from the report.

DURHAM HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS: I was impressed that the team members allocated their research responsibilities on the basis of their recognised skills and talents - they were one of the few schools that explained this. Equally, they were one of the schools to make the greatest use of the defined sources available to them, but the benefits of doing so did not show in the sections of the report.

DURHAM JOHNSTON SCHOOL: Overall, the team has shown a good level of creativity and initiative and has produced a good piece of work.

FRAMWELLGATE COMPREHENSIVE: The team's research was very good and they have made good use of the Internet, paper-based research and defined sources. Their teamwork has been exemplary, with four meetings, all with agendas and minutes prepared, showing their progress through this particular task.

FYNDOUNE COMMUNITY COLLEGE: I particularly liked the way in which the team has depicted the business departments as cogs with linkages, in order to show how departments must work together in order to create an efficient and successful business whole.

GILESGATE SPORTS COLLEGE: This was a good effort by the team, with an original idea of presenting the report using a Power Point presentation in order to get across the basis of its findings. The Power Point was clear and punchy in style, but this in turn might not allow the team to fully demonstrate its understanding of the departmental processes it had discovered.

ST LEONARD'S RCVA SCHOOL: This has proved a very difficult submission to mark, given the immense amount of material that was submitted, both within the team's report and as supplementary information. Without wishing to sound too harsh - since there are many good points about the submission - I think it is an example of the quantity not allowing the quality of the work to show through.