A DARK room, a row of chairs and five pairs of eyes staring straight at you.

It’s a thought terrifying enough to give the adult contestants of BBC’s Dragons Den weak knees and sweaty palms. Now imagine doing it aged 11 or 12.

For nearly 400 year seven and eight pupils from Oakfields Community College in Middlesbrough that was the reality on Wednesday and Thursday (March 13 and 14) as they took part in a business skills day at Middlesbrough Football Club.

The students spent the morning practicing their skills buying and selling t-shirts and trying to minimise cost, identify a market and maximise their profits.

Then, using these skills, they had just an hour to put together a realistic business proposal for a company they could run in their school before presenting it to the Dragons.

Meriem Lairini, who works for the school and attended the day, said: “At the school at the moment we have several students who have formed businesses so the idea behind today was to get more kids involved.

“We’ve had some great ideas so far including a healthy vending machine and a P.E. kit rental company. We can now take these ideas back to the school and look at setting them up and getting the children to run them.”

The panel of Dragons included the head of retail from Middlesbrough FC as well as local executives from Barclays bank.

As well as honing their entrepreneurial talents the pupils got to take a tour of the stadium and walk down the tunnel.