Simon Hepburn, founder, Marketing Advice for Schools, gives his advice on how to create a strong communications team in your school
The government has made no secret of its desire for schools to join trusts, and for existing trusts to grow in size. This brings numerous challenges for schools and those who work in them, but the rationale behind it is that it offers economies of scale, access to new innovations and opportunities to develop specialist staff.
While, historically, this has focused on areas such as finance, HR and IT, trusts are now seeing opportunities in the area of communication – which might involve employing a digital media specialist to use the latest technology to keep in touch with parents while reducing pressure on schools, increasing income generation through creating central expertise in making grant applications, or helping the trust itself grow through developing its reputation in the education community.
Lisa Fathers, director of development, partnerships and teaching school hubs at Bright Futures Educational Trust, believes that bringing communication to the centre creates a strategic advantage. “MATs and schools need to be able to articulate their vision, values, success and approach through a variety of messages. Bringing to life the very ‘Why?’ at the core of a MAT or a school – and aligning both – is an absolute basic in terms of success.
“By developing a ‘team’ centrally and across a MAT’s schools you create a structure and vehicle to embed important messages internally and externally. Internal communication is as important as external in ensuring ‘one organisation’ and alignment. Having a strategic plan which includes all stakeholders allows for brand profile raising and also secures staff recruitment and impacts on pupil numbers. In addition to all this, if a MAT wants to grow, this is even more critical.”
What would this structure look like?
Working with a number of trusts to tease out what their future communications structure should look like tends towards one of two models, which sit at extremes:
A central communications team, working with existing teaching and support staff who provide stories and other information. This is often used by small trusts or those larger ones who have a strong central brand identity – but this model can distance those doing the communication from teachers and other staff who meet parents and other stakeholders regularly.
A ‘hub’ model where a communications professional looks after a number of primary schools or a large secondary school, or a combination of both. This is used by trusts that are keen to retain the individual identities of schools. The main disadvantage of this approach is that it leads to a lot of duplication of effort, reducing the impact of the trust model.
However, there is currently increasing interest in a third ‘stakeholder’ model where responsibility for communication is divided depending on the particular group being targeted – so, for example, a central team manages social media, recruitment advertising, and relationships with the local authority, as well as creating a consistent written and visual brand. Some of these areas could be outsourced further to specialists in areas such as lettings management or income generation.
Individual schools will use the advice and materials from the centre to manage parental communication, hold events and, perhaps, deal with individual school lettings – the actual split will depend on the circumstances of the trust and often how close the schools are together.
What skills are needed?
Whichever model is chosen, the problem that schools and trusts face is how to find, or develop, the new skills needed to run these areas – especially given the lack of existing expertise in the sector and the relatively high pay on offer to marketing and communication professionals in the wider world.
A good place to look to assess the skills needed is the professional standards framework of the Institute of School Business Leaders – marketing and communications makes up one of the five key areas; skills are divided into tiers that reflect relatively more senior roles.
If staff are recruited from outside education with strong communications experience and expertise, in my experience, it is really important to give them a deep ‘immersion’ in education so they understand the ‘language of schools’ and the pressures on those working in them; this could include shadowing a range of roles within schools as well as spending time with trust and school leaders to explore key organisational needs.
Many schools choose instead to develop existing staff – teachers, school business leaders or other staff – who have an interest in the area or relevant skills such as design or business experience. For those taking on supporting roles (the skills in tiers one and two of the ISBL framework) specific training is available from ISBL(as well as other commercial providers. I am one of the trainers on several of the ISBL courses).
For those taking on more senior roles, setting overall communication strategy or, for example, implementing a re-branding programme across a large trust (ISBL tiers 3 and 4), schools should investigate courses offered by the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
While these courses may seem expensive, and more appropriate to the private sector, schools and trusts can often use the apprenticeship levy (paid by any organisation that has a pay bill of more than £3m per year) to vastly reduce their costs. Offering high level training through the apprenticeship route is also great way to retain people in an organisation – and will also set up your trust well for further growth as the sector consolidates.
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