Education Marketing

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The Guardian this week carried a story about a simple but brilliant piece of hospital research.  The researchers wanted to know if an incredibly simple modification to what people in hospitals do when working with intravenous drips could cut infection rates.

Please don’t give up on me at this point – there is a real educational issue here – and this is not about some complex medical procedure.  All the researchers instituted was a tick list.  The research set out to prove whether there were less infections when the medical team had a tick list covering all the basics - such as wash your hands, put on the gloves, and so on.

The result of the research was amazing – in a period of 18 months the level of infections dropped by 75%, 1500 people lived who (by the results being obtained before) would have died, and over £100 million was saved in terms of further medical intervention.

All from a simple tick list reminding people to do the obvious.

Now in schools we don’t deal with saving people’s lives, but we do have to deal with public (or in the case of private schools) parents’ money.  Just imagine what impacts we could all make through such tiny changes as this.  

There is just one problem.  While, in the medical sphere, there is a tradition going back hundreds of years of experiment and  research on the job, this is not the case in schools.  Of course I can’t talk about your school, and I’ll be delighted to receive your comments telling me I am wrong, but my experience in general is that very few teachers, administrators and managers actually do any research in schools at all.   The only exception I know about are those people working on M Phils and PhD degrees.

Maybe its because “research” sounds too grand.  But as the tick box story (which is quite real – page 16 Guardian, Feb 23) shows simple ideas can be tried out to see what effect they have as long as the results are measured.  And no one can say, “you can’t do that with children’s futures” – the example we are drawing from was an experiment with people’s lives.

My personal view is that we could all make a huge difference to schools if we just said to ourselves – I wonder if things would work better if we did this….  Let’s try and encourage teachers to treat our products as a test - or indeed let’s offer our products to teachers to test them out, and then get the results back.  

There’s more information on a daily basis on the Education Marketing news group – to subscribe just send an email to education-marketing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com  

Tony Attwood

Slowly, very slowly, the concept of efficiency is creeping into education.   Three years ago a new course for school administrators (the Certificate in Educational Administration) was launched, which focussed very much on efficiency in the school office.   Then the government set up the Financial Management in Schools programme, and the Value for Money Unit.

Back in the world of administration, the School of Educational Administration launched a service through which administrators can write in and ask questions about anything to do with educational administration.

And now they are speaking of the great success they are having with Use the Key.

The project is run by the TDA, and the aim is this – if senior managers have a question and they don’t know how to get the answer, they search The Key’s site for answers to all the previous questions people have asked, and if the answer is not there, they email the project and one of their ten researchers will send you back the answer.

According to a report in the Guardian the sort of questions coming up are  “How can I engage hard-to-reach parents?”, “Can I use Wi-Fi in my school safely?”, and “How can I raise achievement in boys’ writing?”.   Teachers can’t ask legal questions, but anything else educational is ok.

Apparently all questions are answered within 72 hours and the service is thought to be saving users 5 hours a week.

An independent report shows that school leaders believe the service is saving them on average five hours per question asked.

To access the Key you need to be a senior manager in a school in England but you can see a little about what’s what at http://www.usethekey.org.uk/  

For school administrators a similar service is run by the School of Educational Administration, which is part of the Hamilton House group.  

The value for money unit is at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/valueformoney/ 

Tony Attwood

The amount of mail being received by schools towards the end of last year was far less than most people imagine, according to a survey by Hamilton House Mailings plc.

Many heads of departments received at most one direct mail advertisement per week. The survey was conducted during the Autumn Term 2007 and analysed the direct mail received by both primary and secondary schools in England.

Most notable was the huge variation in the amount of mail received in different subject areas.

While some subject co-ordinators and heads of department could go for weeks without receiving any advertisements, a small number of teachers got 3 or more a week. Interestingly the teachers who received the most mail were not the same ones as received the most mail two or three years ago.

Music teachers, for example, are now among the most heavily mailed in schools, whereas three years ago they were receiving very little mail.

Despite the fact that Hamilton House has regularly warned about the fact that headteachers in secondary schools get large amounts of mail that is screened out by the school administrators or the Head’s PA, there has been no decline in this area, with heads getting 10 times or more as much direct mail as the most heavily mailed head of department.

While it is worth mailing headteachers on certain occasions, most of the time the mail is better directed elsewhere.

The Report Direct mail to schools – A survey of the mail reaching schools in the Autumn term 2007 is available as a download from the Library section of the Hamilton House website for £5.00 plus VAT at http://tinyurl.com/2dqunt A full list of all the articles on the site is shown at http://www.hamilton-house.com/gateways/articles.html

Teachers will find it easier to take pupils on school trips with more help and advice, less bureaucracy and quality badges for popular destinations, according to the Department of Children, Schools and Families who have just launched the ‘Staying Safe’ Action Plan on school trips.  

The government stresses the fact that it believes that learning outside of the classroom brings benefits to pupils such as deeper subject learning, increased self confidence and raised achievement. It can also help young people to understand and manage risk. The new guidance, they say, makes it much easier for teachers to take their pupils out of the classroom.

Organisations that host school or other youth group visits such as museums, historic houses, field study centres and farms will be encouraged to qualify for quality ‘badges’, which will help teachers identify places that provide high quality learning outside of the classroom, and are managing safety effectively. This will help reduce the bureaucratic burden of risk assessment on teachers.

The measure was included in the ‘Staying Safe’ Action Plan, launched by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. New measures outlined in the report include: • A new Child Safety Education coalition

• New guidance for professionals on bullying in non school settings like children’s homes and FE colleges
• New guidance on safeguarding and on protecting children with disabilities or special educational needs from bullying
• A new safeguarding unit for the Third Sector
• New guidance on child employment
• New guidance on cross-border issues
• Publish research on joint working between children’s and housing services (with the Department for Communities and Local Government)
• Publish a review of safety education materials for Personal, Social and Health Education
• Carry out a Priority Review of local area accident prevention
• Put forward safeguarding theme for the local authority beacon award scheme The Out and About guidance on school visits will be available from May 2008 and the quality badge in September 2008.

The new ‘Staying Safe’ action plan sets out how government will deliver the new Public Service Agreement on improving children and young people’s safety. The Departmental commitment to this was confirmed in the Children’s Plan, which was launched in December 2007.

The plan reflects the cross government nature of the Public Service Agreement and includes plans and actions for a number of departments including: Home Office, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, Department of Health, Department for Transport, Department for Communities and Local Government, Ministry of Justice.The Staying Safe Action Plan is available at http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/stayingsafe/

The Children’s Plan is available from http://www.dcsf.gov.uk The Out and About guidance will build on the widely-used, long-standing Health and Safety Of Pupils on Educational Visits; it will emphasise the enabling effect of sensible risk management as advocated by the Health and Safety Executive and others. No more than three A4 forms should be necessary for most off-site visits.The badge scheme is voluntary.

There’s more on www.educationmarketing.org.uk – and you can stay up to date with daily emails about education marketing by sending an email to education-marketing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com – the service is free and you can opt out at any time.

Tony Attwood

The network of specialist schools in England is just about complete – which means that anyone wishing to market to schools can do so according to the specialism they are interested in.  Obviously if you are mailing all secondary schools and getting a decent response rate you might not want to break it down further, but if your response rate from secondary schools is not good enough, focussing on the relevant specialist schools can resolve the matter.

Schools Minister Andrew Adonis has announced 89 more schools in England that have been given specialist status, including 24 Special Schools.

This means that 88% of all maintained secondary schools are now specialist and 26 local authorities are 100% specialist.

Of the 89 schools awarded specialist status today, 10 in Sport, 2 in languages, 17 in Arts. 6 in Business and Enterprise, 7 Combined, 2 Engineering, 8 Humanities, 11 Mathematics and Computing, 2 Music, 17 Special Educational Needs, 2 Technology and 5 Science.

These schools will begin operating as specialist schools from September 2008.

Specialist schools have a focus on their chosen subject area but must meet National Curriculum requirements to deliver a broad and balanced education to all pupils. There are ten categories of specialist school: Technology; Languages; Arts; Sports; Business and Enterprise; Engineering; Mathematics & Computing; Science; Humanities and Music. Schools can also combine any two specialisms. Special schools may alternatively apply for the special educational needs specialism.

In 2005 the Specialist Schools Programme was piloted to extend the choice available for maintained and non-maintained special schools, by allowing them to specialist in one of the areas of the SEN Code of Practice:
- communication and interaction;
- cognition and learning;
- behavioural, emotional and social development;
- sensory and /or physical needs

Maintained and non-maintained special schools are eligible to apply for specialist status in one of ten curricular specialisms. There are 68 special schools with specialist status for a curriculum specialism and 87 with the SEN specialism.

To apply for specialist status, schools must raise £50,000 in private sector sponsorship (less in the case of small schools with under 500 pupils on roll) and draw up a school and community plan to raise standards, increase provision and encourage take-up in their specialist subjects. Their community development plan will show how they will share the benefits of good practice, expertise and resources with other schools named in the plan and with identified groups within their wider community. The Government believes that widening schools’ options in this way means they are able to develop their individual strengths, promote innovation and spread good practice throughout the whole school system.

In order to help them develop their specialism, specialist schools receive the following additional funding from the Government: £100,000 for a capital project to enhance the facilities in the subjects related to the school’s specialism; and recurrent funding of around £129 per pupil per year (£645 per pupil for curriculum special schools), to implement their specialist school development plans. SEN specialist schools receive £60,000 per annum to implement their plans. In addition to the £100,000 capital grant the school itself must raise £50,000 in unconditional sponsorship (less for small schools with under 500 pupils on roll) towards the capital project. Specialist schools are expected to target around one third (one half for SEN schools) of their specialist school recurrent funding on sharing resources and expertise in their specialist area with partner schools and the wider community.

In 2003 the Government introduced a ‘Partnership Fund’ to provide support to specialist school applicants hat can demonstrate their sustained efforts to find sponsorship have been unsuccessful. The fund is administered by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust in accordance with DCSF criteria. 394 schools have benefited so far.

A total of 26 Local Authorities are now 100% specialist: Bath and NE Somerset, Blackpool, Brent, Bromley, Cornwall, Devon, Durham, Ealing, Gateshead, Harrow, Hartlepool, Herefordshire, Kingston upon Thames, Lambeth, Middlesbrough, North Lincolnshire, North Somerset, Plymouth, Rutland, Thurrock, Trafford, Wakefield, Walsall, West Berkshire, Wigan and York.

You can read more about marketing to schools on www.educationmarketing.org.uk and by subscribing to the Education Marketing news group by emailing education-marketing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com