A GROUP of teenage schoolgirls won more than £3000 in a dragons-den style entrepreneurship competition after designing a hijab for the younger female market.

Lelia Hoad, Imogen Rogers, Alice Heap, Olivia Austin and Jess Pavey, all in Year 12 at Brighton College, scooped the £3,333 prize as part of their school’s annual search for great business ideas.

The girls shared a £10,000 prize with two other teams – one which developed a ground-breaking website for second hand school uniform sales and another which invented bespoke grips on crutches to avoid blisters.

The cash will be used by the teams as seed money to grow the businesses.

Pupils were tasked with coming up with viable plans for a product or technology that would make money if given seed funding.

The pupils worked in school houses to brainstorm ideas and then competed in heats to try and make the grand final which was judged by local entrepreneurs.

Lelia said: “Every year pupils from our sister school, the London Academy of Excellence in east London, come to visit Brighton College as part of an A-Level buddy scheme.

“We got chatting to some of the girls who wore hijabs and they were complaining that sometimes they were uncomfortable and too baggy.

“They also said they didn’t feel they had much of a choice colour-wise.

“This gave us an idea for our business.

“But beyond the simple numbers, we wanted to come up with an entrepreneurial idea that chimed with our values at school which are that every person should be able to express themselves freely.

“The hijab we have made is really comfortable, has buttons to keep it in place and comes in a huge array of colours.”

Director of Entrepreneurship at the school Sally Woodmansey said: “There were actually some amazing ideas that the girls and boys came up with and it is heart-breaking that only three teams can win.

“But their ideas were really exceptional and not only that but they managed to put together incredibly professional pitches that showed a real working knowledge of how to present to investors.”

The competition was developed after headmaster Richard Cairns noticed that school children were not being given the opportunity to develop their entrepreneurial side.