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Visit our Schools and Colleges – register to take part!

EdComs is delighted to highlight this exciting new initiative from the Education and Employers Taskforce, who are planning the first ever national campaign for business leaders to visit state schools and colleges during the week of the 18 – 22 October 2010.

This ‘call to action’ is a chance for bosses from private, public and third sector organisations to hear first-hand from head teachers and young people ages 5 – 19 about they can actively help shape their  skills, achievement and employability.

Taking part in Visit our Schools week is free to everyone and only requires 1 or 2 hours of your time in the week of 18-22 October to visit a school/college in your locality. For further details and to register to take part visit: www.visitourschools.org

Leaders from the worlds of education and business have united behind this unique campaign, including all the main teaching unions, school and college leadership bodies and employer representative bodies such as the British Chambers of Commerce, Confederation of British Industry, Federation of Small Business, Institute of Directors and Trades Union Congress.

“Engaging directly with schools and colleges is one of the most effective ways in which employers can help shape education today to meet the skills needs of tomorrow. The IoD is fully behind this campaign.” Miles Templeman, Director General of the Institute of Directors

“There is much that school and business leaders can learn from each other. Visit our Schools provides a fast-track opportunity for everyone to expand their knowledge and skills. The BCC encourage their members to use this rare opportunity to learn about how they can engage directly with education to boost skills of both existing staff and potential young recruits.”
David Frost, Director General of the British Chamber of Commerce and Industry

“Employers and schools working in partnership can enhance the learning experience of children and young people. The Visit our Schools and Colleges campaign is a great opportunity to bring together business leaders with teachers and pupils. Mutual support, co-operation and understanding between business leaders and schools will help to continue to ensure that young people have the knowledge and skills which they need for a successful adult life.”

Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, the largest teachers’ union

“We’re delighted to be supporting this campaign. There’s huge scope for fruitful education partnerships with employers that can help pupils achieve their full potential and that’s why we are encouraging school leaders to get involved.”  Steve Munby, Chief Executive of the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services.

Big names from the world of business who have already signed up for visits include film-maker Lord David Puttnam; Sir Mike Rake, chairman of BT; Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of global advertising agency WPP; Robert Peston, BBC Business Editor; Clare Chapman, Director-General, NHS Workforce and Sam Laidlaw, CEO of Centrica.

On the 29^th - 30^th June in the Grand Hall at Olympia in Kensington, the  Marketing Week Live 2010 event took to the floor. The event takes place every year with separate shows for different areas of marketing, including the In-Store, Data Marketing, Insight and Online Marketing Shows.  Steph and Sarah were there on behalf of the Research team to check out what was going on in the Insight Show .

It was pretty hot outside so we were both glad to be in the coolness of the air conditioned hall, but even aside from the refreshing temperature, it was a great day. We were able to see several speakers sharing the innovative and exciting ways they had been able to gain really great insights into different audiences, and then speak to them afterwards about how they went about achieving these. From co-discovery and ethnographic approaches using film, to gaining access to online youth communities, to adapting psychometric testing techniques to gain insights into audience perceptions, there was certainly more than enough food for thought. With a whole host of new suppliers vying for our attention as we went around, offering cupcakes, sweets and even a personal caricaturist (judge for yourself what you think of the outcome of that!), we were spoilt for choice for people who could help us put some of these approaches into practice ourselves.

We’re now working on going through the information we picked up, and creating unique ideas for applying some of the new approaches at EdComs. Traditional approaches definitely have an important role, but there is always room for creativity. It just goes to show that with a little imagination research knows no bounds. So watch this space for some great, new and exciting things coming your way soon in a Research department near you!

The Live team has been making the rounds with Sunshine Sam! Working on behalf of Boots, he’s been out and about making facilitated appearances to promote safety in the sun.

In June, Sunshine Sam came to Capital Tower to join in with a session being held by the Research Team to highlight young people’s understanding and experience in sun safety. He then travelled up to Norwich to attend the Henderson Green School Summer Fete. At the fete Sunshine Sam joined in with activities and games and the children had a fantastic day.

The Programme Development teams have been active this quarter running the judging for the RBS Personal Finance Education Awards. The awards are sponsored by The Royal Bank of Scotland Group in association with pfeg (Personal Finance Education Group) and focus on examples of excellence in personal finance education (PFE). All teachers and students in schools teaching 11-18s in England, Wales and Scotland were eligible to enter. Their efforts culminated in a ceremony on 17th June, and you can see some of the programme’s highlights here.

We were also really pleased by the excellent response to the Google Schools Election resources. These resources brought together schools election results from around the country, and then created an electoral map of how Britain might look if voted for by under-18s. This innovative tool enabled schools to compare their votes with other local schools, schools around the country, and the actual general election result. These topical and engaging resources reached over 250,000 young people.

In addition to these successful developments, we also continued our work for The Children’s Society, dealing with sensitive issues with a set of resources about young people who run away.

It’s been a busy few months for Research since the last newsletter, and the run-up to the end of the financial year in March certainly kept us all on our toes! We have been working on a number of interesting and exciting projects, as ever, some of them with new clients and some continuing to work with clients who know us well.

In March, we completed the third wave of the five-year study we are conducting for RBS, tracking financial literacy amongst young people in relation to the RBS MoneySense programme, the biggest survey of its kind across the UK. In April we also completed a study for the Financial Services Authority and Her Majesty’s Treasury, a new client for us, to inform the Moneymadeclear advertsing campaign, so continuing to develop our expertise in the financial sector. Finally, we have just begun work to update and renew our panel of 1,000+ science teachers and technicians for the Science Learning Centres. The panel is now entering is second year after a very successful 2009/10 year gaining deeper insight into science teaching.

Consultancy News

The Talent Agenda has been exercising the minds of the Consultancy Team in the last few weeks.  We have been working on a report on the impact of the Talent and Enterprise Taskforce, which was established by the Prime Minister in September 2007 and headed up by Lucy Parker (former Chief Executive of Cantos Communications). The Taskforce had a remit to engage influential networks and organisations in all sectors of society in responding to the Talent challenge.  The Talent challenge centres on the contention that Britain’s future prosperity will depend on the talents, skills and creativity of its people. In the new global economy, the jobs of the future will be in talent-based knowledge-based industries.

Through interviews with key stakeholders, the EdComs team looked at both the impact that had been achieved and the way the Taskforce had operated.

“I was glad to engage EdComs to conduct an evaluation of over two years’ work and was delighted with the result. The team worked closely in partnership with me and were imaginative in searching out significant themes and presenting them vividly through the work. I felt confident that they would manage the interactions with the senior stakeholders I had built relationships with over the years, and their ability to do that added weight to the final report they delivered.”  Lucy Parker, Chair of The Talent & Enterprise Task Force

Still on the talent theme, the Consultancy team has also been thinking about employee talent for construction company, Bouygues UK. Bouygues UK is a subsidiary of Bouygues Construction, one of the world's leading construction and services groups, and the company employs around 500 people in the UK. The Consultancy team has been helping create a new identity for its employee volunteering programme. Bouygues UK is keen to encourage employees to take part in the programme and the new identity aims to raise awareness of the programme and the opportunities available for employees.

“We have been impressed with how quickly the EdComs team understood our company culture and was able to create an identity for our volunteering programme that really reflects our values. The company exceeded our expectations and we will definitely be working with EdComs again.” – Sara Schmid, External Communications Manager

EdComs on keeping a million balls in the air, all-consuming pitch work and the impact of the new Coalition government.

The radio silence on this blog is indicative of just how busy things have been here over the last few weeks. Pleased to say, however, that I'm trying to resume normal service on this blog going forward. Thankfully, we've won some new work and have been pitching for lots more, and that's been the core focus of the last month or so. On that point, I greatly enjoyed @normanmonkey's recent blog post and tweet on the trials and pitfalls of doing pitch work, particularly at weekends - well worth a read. 

On the subject of keeping busy, Michael Gove and colleagues at the DfE are making an incredibly quick job of reworking the UK education system to their liking. Despite some confusion around the future of the Building Schools for the Future programme, we can be clear that the national curriculum will be reworked to restore the "importance of knowledge" rather than skills. It has also been revealed that AS levels will be scrapped and that A Levels will be overhauled to add legitimacy to that "gold standard" qualification.

The Sunday Times ran a great story this weekend with the headline "What will the schools revolution mean for your child?", that pretty succinctly brought together all of the key themes around the debate, and even brought yummy mummies into the debate somehow! Unfortunately, the new Times paywall means I can't share it more widely. Isn't it interesting how the debate has shifted to "free" schools and paid for media, and just how quickly that movement has occcured? I'm sure that there's more to come in the education policy space in the following weeks, and we'll watch developments with great interest.

Today's announcement that the General Teaching Council is to be disbanded brings the number of educational NDPB's shut down by the new coalition administration up to three. Interestingly, it's the first whose demise hadn't been widely predicted but it's certainly not the first to be closed, apparently, without any consultation.

I keep thinking of posting a summary of all of the changes but it would be out of date as soon as it goes live, such is the rate of change at the moment. Once things settle down, I'll publish a detailed summary of what the landscape looks like.

Great to welcome Helen and Olivia back to the office this week after maternity leave. It already seems like they've never been away!

So it isn’t national TV but EdComs were delighted to appear in the recent NAHT TV video produced for BP.

NAHT TV has produced a great short video featuring BP’s work in education. It features some of the work carried out for the BP Educational Service by EdComs, as well as some local teachers and children using them. Oh, and there are cameos for some EdComs staff to support the starring role of our BP client, Ian Duffy.