Seven entrepreneurial Dewsbury students launched a successful social enterprise from their classroom as part of Dragons’ Den star Peter Jones’ competition Tycoon in Schools.

The Westborough High School team has set up Ethical Print, a community newsletter aimed at local residents.

By selling advertising space to local businesses, the youngsters raised more than £5,000.

The money will be distributed between five charities, all of which will also receive considerable coverage in the first edition of the paper, to be published in January.

Lukman Patel, director of learning for business and ethics at Westborough, said: “I am extremely proud of what our students have achieved in the competition so far.

“With massive support from our local community they have put into practice an innovative business model and learned a great deal in the process.”

The charities chosen by the year 10s are the RSPCA, the Salvation Army, Age Concern, Macmillan Cancer Support and Water Aid.

The students are also making a concerted effort to prioritise green issues in the paper, and have held discussions with local firms on how to reduce their carbon footprint.

Fatima Yunus, sales manager for Ethical Print, said: “By giving our profits to charity we are offering organisations the opportunity to donate in a way that is beneficial to them.

“We’ve had a really good response so far. We’ve got more than 50 businesses on our books and have had to raise our projected target from £1,000.

“We will definitely continue running our company once the competition is over. We plan to publish a paper every month and encourage other schools to use a similar model.”

Jennifer Napper, head teacher at Westborough, said: “The business department is a thriving one and it is great to see how the pupils make massive gains not only in knowledge but in confidence and resilience.

“They speak with real passion about being able to tackle topics which both interest them and will help equip them with life skills.”

Launched by Peter Jones and run by the Peter Jones Foundation to educate the next generation of entrepreneurs, Tycoon in Schools challenges schoolchildren across the UK to head their own companies.With a start-up loan of up to £1,000, teams compete to raise the most profits.