YOUNGSTERS pitching their skills to a tough panel of City business leaders have been praised—for deviating from their planned Powerpoint presentation and ad-libbing. Around 60 youngsters took to the stage at a conference organised by professional investment bankers to promote the benefits of the Diploma in IT, launched earlier this year

By Julia Gregory

YOUNGSTERS pitching their skills to a tough panel of City business leaders have been praised-for deviating from their planned Powerpoint presentation and ad-libbing.

Around 60 youngsters took to the stage at a conference organised by professional investment bankers to promote the benefits of the Diploma in IT, launched earlier this year.

Panel members were not as fiery as the venture capitalists on TV's Dragon's Den, but offered the students advice on developing their techniques.

Royal Bank of Scotland programme manager Roger Newman told the youngsters: "Some of the best presenting we saw was when you stopped concentrating on the Powerpoint and told us something that wasn't in the script."

But it was still a demanding experience for the students from Poplar's Tower Hamlets College, the Bow School of Maths & Computing, Whitechapel's Swanlea and Stepney's Sir John Cass secondary schools.

They had been given five minutes to present the new qualification for 14 to 19-year-olds to the professionals from Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank of Scotland, Morgan Stanley, Rothschild and Tesco as well as the City of London Corporation, testing their ability to co-operate with people they had never met before.

It was an 'investment' in the future for the City business community currently facing the difficult economic downturn in the economy.