Hackney meets royalty in Istanbul

By Chris Mason
BBC News, Istanbul

The Queen and Prince Philip met the London pupils at Kabatas School

By my calculation, Buckingham Palace is less than five miles away if you live in Hackney in east London.

And yet students at Haggerston School and Hackney Community College have completed a 3,000-mile round trip to meet the Queen - and develop their business skills.

On the third day of the Queen's State Visit to Turkey - her first since 1971 - she flew to Istanbul.

Her first engagement was at the Kabatas School, one of the oldest, most prestigious and certainly most scenically located schools anywhere in Turkey.

The grounds lead down to the Bosphorus, the beautiful, serene looking channel that connects the Mediterranean to the Black Sea.

And on a small patch of grass between the classrooms, a short distance from an ornate fountain, there sits a collection of tables and two display boards. One is for Haggerston School, the other for Hackney Community College.

The pupils have worked together on marketing a hybrid bike

Both are based in a part of London with a strong local Turkish community and, through the British Council, they secured funding to work on a business studies project with their counterparts at Kabatas.

The project involves a business plan for marketing a pedal bike that also has an electric motor.

Ozlem Kol-Giray, 38, the teacher accompanying the girls from Haggerston, has worked in the UK for the last 10 years but has family in Istanbul.

She said: "I feel very privileged to be part of this programme given that I'm from here.

"It's been a great opportunity for my students to bring them here and to work with the students from Kabatas."

As the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh worked their way through the school, they spent a couple of minutes chatting with students from both London and Istanbul.

The pupils told how they found the best business model would see the hybrid bikes made in Istanbul but sold in the UK.

'Asia over there'

The Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who is in Turkey talking with the country's ministers about a number of issues including Turkey's application for membership of the European Union, hopped on one of the bikes and rode it playfully around the grounds.

Suitably impressed, the students were undoubtedly enthused about their project - and their visitors.

The students from London described their trip as "amazing"

Jessie Russell-Donn, 15, from Bethnal Green, said: "This is really good. I don't feel like I've worked enough to deserve it.

"It's amazing and certainly beats meeting the Queen in Buckingham Palace!"

"It's so great. Istanbul is the furthest I've been away from home," says Courtney Caton, 13, from Dalston.

Gesticulating over the Bosphorus, she adds: "Asia is just over there - it's amazing. I feel really lucky to be here.

"I hope the Queen realises how good this has been for us - so others can get a chance too."

The students talked fluently and confidently too about their business ideas. What worked and what did not - and the plans they would like to develop in the future.

With this kind of entrepreneurial zeal, I think it may not be long before some of them run into another VIP.

How far is it from Hackney to Sir Alan Sugar's Apprentice office?