Getting positive coverage in appropriate media three times each month sounds a tough call – but with the right approach it is possible. 

We can guarantee to achieve this every month because we are (probably) the only PR and Marketing Agency that specialises exclusively in reaching teachers.

So we know the market, and we know the journalists, and we really can deliver.   

Thus we can give an absolute guarantee that you will get coverage in at least three different magazines, papers, TV stations or radio stations, every single month.   (Sometimes of course we get you more than three media appearances, but when we do we don’t charge extra.  We just let you have that as a bonus). 

In the extremely unlikely event that we fail to get you the promised coverage, we don’t charge you a penny for that month’s work.

But that’s not all.   As part of our package we also work developing separate longer-term projects with you (call me if you would like to have some examples).   We also undertake regular research for our clients into teacher attitudes, buying habits, competitor activity and the like.  It is all included in the monthly fee.

Of course sometimes a smaller, more specialised type of campaign is required and we can always tailor our work to meet such needs.   For example, some companies do not need the guarantee of significant coverage every month and obviously that reduces costs.  In other cases the research into teacher attitudes and activities is not needed very often, and again that cuts down on our expenditure on your behalf.   Where this is so we can cut our monthly fee dramatically.

In other cases the key issue may be marketing – analysing response rates, evolving new approaches, comparing email with direct mail, devising new incentives and so on.   Obviously here our fee can be lower than might otherwise be the case.

We’re happy to discuss the marketing and PR coverage we’ve achieved in the past, and come up with ideas for a campaign for you, without charge or obligation.   Do give us a call and we’ll talk it all through.

Just call 01536 399 000

These things are all free, gratis, complimentary, on the house.  But the house has no food.  Not a crumb.  Not a sausage.  Not a bean.  Sorry.

However some of the teachers who get your shared mail leaflet also get an email from you.  These emails go direct to the teachers who have opted into this service – which means not all of them get it (but the real whizzo teaching enthusiasts do get it).   No charge.  Not a cent.  Zero.  Nothing.  Nil.  Nought.  Square root of minus two.

Then another set of your leaflets (up to 10% of the original number booked) are mailed out to teachers at no charge.  Not a penny.  Totally without cost in any form.

Finally details of your product or service are included for a year on the School Procurement Website, complete with links to your email and your own web address.  And here disbursement = 0.  It’s free.  You don’t pay.  Not today, not ever.

If we add to all this the unique fact that our shared mailings carry a cover page from the School of Educational Administration to the administrator, you’ll get the picture that our shared mailings are, well unique.  Inimitable.  Incomparable.  Matchless.  Peerless.  Without equal.

But, I hear you asking (although not literally you appreciate) do shared mailings work?   A good question and one I am asked often.  Regularly.  Frequently.

The fact is that HHM has, over the years, used shared mailings to sell tens of thousands of our own products to schools.   We’ve learned what makes one item sell and another one flop – and we are more than excited (champing at the bit you might say) at the prospect of you phoning up and asking us to have a look at your leaflet and comment on how a few minor changes might make it work all the better.  (That bit is free too).  We really are getting quite energised by it all.  Quite worked up.

Tony Attwood

PS: If you have received letters from me in the past you’ll know that I used to sign off with a silly phrase such as “no horseman will call”.   As an attention seeking ploy it worked, but endlessly seeking attention is rather unbecoming.  So I don’t do it no more.  Not never.  Ever.  Well, only on Tuesdays when there’s no dancing.     Call me on 01536 399 000 if you want any of this to be unravelled.

“The power of games as a learning tool is the great untapped education resource of our time,” said Nipan Maniar, a senior lecturer in creative technologies at the University of Portsmouth..

“I expect many other games companies will get onboard when they see the obvious benefits to society of using games as one more tool to educate young people… The possibilities to use technology in this way are very exciting for anyone who has an interest in education, teaching and learning.”

However there are problems.   The Code of Advertising Practice (5.4.5 Subliminal advertising) says that “No advertisement may use images of very brief duration, or any other technique which is likely to influence viewers, without their being fully aware of what has been done,” which covers advertising – but of course not games.

6.—(1) The Commission shall do all that they can to secure that every licensed service complies with the following requirements, namely—
(e) that its programmes do not include any technical device which, by using images of very brief duration or by any other means, exploits the possibility of conveying a message to, or otherwise influencing the minds of, persons watching the programmes without their being aware, or fully aware, of what has occurred.

So, if this sort of approach is outlawed in advertising and broadcasting, should it really be part of education?

And so, July 15 2008 is the first ever CELEBRATE SCHOOLS DAY. A day to celebrate all the great things that happened this year.

We want to celebrate (and get media coverage for) both the thousands of pupils who have done well in their studies, plus those that have done something for others, and those who (without causing any harm) have enjoyed themselves. Those who quite simply have done the work, and then smiled and laughed, and enjoyed life. They just enjoyed the past year.

The idea of celebrating the positive aspects of school came from Iain Bell of Book-Builder. When Iain and I discussed the idea recently he told me that each year his firm publishes large numbers of School Yearbooks. The pupils create these themselves with teeacher support – and the image they project is always one of fun and excitement.

So he had the idea of trying to get this image across to a wider audience – and created CELEBRATE SCHOOLS DAY.

If you want to join in there are two things to do.

First, encourage your pupils to sign in (obviously with teacher guidance and support), and then send in comments, pictures and videos to www.celebrateschoolsday.com - which will be a permanent record of the fact that among all the hard work school can be enjoyable too. (The web site is moderated, so you don’t have to worry about pupils putting up anything that is detrimental. We’ll check everything as it comes in.)

Second it would be great if you could send a press release about something really good that happened in your school to your local paper, your local radio station, and (if you wish) the national press and TV. (By all means send me a copy – I’ll be most interested to see it – but the main thing is to send it to the media).

You don’t have to do both - if you just want to take part in one of the activities that is fine. But the overall aim is simple: to have this one day in the year where we can all say, school is good.

I do hope you will join in – Celebrate Schools Day will only work if you do decide to say something positive to the press in the next week, and tell them it is for Celebrate Schools Day.

If you would like to know more about Celebrate Schools Day please call Holly on 01536 399 000. If you would like to contact Book-Builder please call 0845 388 9901

And although celebrities do have this influence - much of the influence they have is openly seen as negative by teenage girls.

The survey found that away from friends and family, celebrities have the biggest hold with 42% naming them as the greatest influence.

As you might guess, the top celeb is Victoria Beckham, who was nominated  by 35% followed by Leona Lewis who polled 32%.

Kate Moss and Amy Winehouse came next with 29% and 23% respectively.

38% said that the media is the prime influence of their attitudes to alcohol and drugs.  Teachers on the other hand were a prime influence at 30% - way above advertisers who influence 7% and politicians at 4%.    19% say the media influences their opinions about sex and relationships while teachers influence 15% and advertisers 2%.

59% say Channel 4 TV programmes like ‘Skins’ and ‘Hollyoaks’ help them  understand issues affecting people their age.

44% of the girls said they could name more WAGS [footballers’ wives and girlfriends] than female politicians.

However celebrities actually have a negative influence on the way girls view the world, with 59% believing they make girls their age less well-informed.

75% of the girls taking the survey said they used the internet daily, but they placed less trust in it than in newspapers or TV.   The most trusted medium is television news, which was named by 90% of the girls.  Although around half said they didn’t bother to stay informed about world events.

The idea is simple.  Every summer the media run a series of negative educational stories – often centred around the fact that standards in exams are falling, along with declining literacy and numeracy levels in primary schools.  

Such stories are, of course, all made up, and although ministers and others come out and defend schools the newspapers treat such ministerial comments as excuses.

So the plan here is to get in the retaliation first and have a day which celebrates the good things in schools – a day which occurs before the negative summer stories emerge.

In the coming weeks the Celebrating Schools Day committee will be sending press releases to every local paper and radio station in the UK to tell them about the Day and inviting them to contact their local schools for stories of the year.

The idea is that a week or so ahead of the day all interested schools should send a press release to their local paper commenting on some of the great things that have happened during the year in the school.

This can include anything that the school and the pupils or students value – such as special achievements by pupils, money raised for charity, expeditions, work in the community, and indeed the fun and celebration of the leavers’ ball and other such events.

We’ll be putting more ideas and details on the www.schoolspr.co.uk site in the coming weeks and there will – but you might want to make a note of this option now, because there is very little time between now and the big day.  It would be a shame if your local paper received a press release from another school in your area for the Day, and not one from your school.

Celebrating Schools Day is being sponsored by Book-Builder, the company that publishes School Yearbooks.  They will be building a website that allows pupils and students to post their own positive memories and recollections of the year.   There is more about Book-Builder on www.yimple.com or by phoning 0845 388 9901.

Tony Attwood

The research shows half of all parents feel very involved their child’s education - up from just 29 per cent in 2001 - and the majority (65 per cent) want to get even more involved. Parents now see informal discussions with school staff as the most useful way of finding out about a child’s progress.

Since 2001 the proportion of parents who see parents evening as the “most useful” way of communicating has dropped from 43 per cent to 19 per cent. Key findings in the Parental Involvement in Children’s Education survey are that:

• Around half (51 per cent) of parents feel ‘very involved’ in their child’s school life, a noticeable increase from 29 per cent in 2001, and 38 per cent in 2004. In common with previous years, work commitments were perceived as the main barrier to further involvement.

• There has been a moderate shift in parents’ attitudes away from a child’s education being the school’s responsibility, towards it being more equal or mainly or wholly a parent’s responsibility.

• Three in four parents (73 per cent) say it is ‘extremely important’ to help with homework, and this has hardly changed since 2001.

• Parents were generally very positive towards information provided by the school such as information provided about their child’s progress (86 per cent said their child’s school provided clear information on this) and the school being welcoming to parents, (92 per cent said it was).

• Parent’s see communicating with schools through ‘informal discussions with school staff’ as the most useful way of finding out about a child’s progress. This follows a noticeable decline since 2001 in the number who said Parents Evenings are the most useful method (from 43 per cent in 2001 to 19 per cent in 2007).

• The survey findings show many sub-group differences, but some of the strongest impacts and most consistent differences have been found in respect of parents of children identified as having Special Educational Needs (SEN).

 The Parental Involvement in Children’s Education (PICE) 2007 survey involved a telephone survey of 5,032 randomly selected parents of children attending state schools. Similar surveys have been carried out in 2001 and 2004. This year absent parents were included for the first time.

 It is available at:
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/DCSF-RR034.pdf

Tony Attwood

Here’s a summary of what the government says it is doing in this field, in its most recent pronoucements.

• Providing funding of around £1m over three years to the No to Failure project. No to Failure is trailblazing and evaluating the impact of specialist training for teachers and specialist tuition for children with dyslexia in some schools in 3 local authority areas.

• Through the National Strategies, rolling out to all areas this year an Inclusion Development Programme (IDP) designed to increase knowledge and awareness of dyslexia and communication difficulties amongst the schools and early years workforce and improve learning outcomes for this particular group of children

• Providing £150K over two financial years to enable the British Dyslexia Association to develop their helpline, which provides advice about dyslexia – including to teachers and parents.

• Providing £250K over three financial years to enable Dyslexia Action to run further Partnership for Literacy pilots.

Sir Jim Rose has been asked to make recommendations on the identification and teaching of children with dyslexia, and on how best to take forward the commitment in the Children’s Plan to establish a pilot scheme in which children with dyslexia will receive Reading Recovery support or one-to-one tuition from specialist dyslexia teachers.

Sir Jim is being asked include the following sources of evidence in developing his recommendations:

• a summary of published research on the impact of specialist dyslexia teaching and Reading Recovery on progression and outcomes for children with dyslexia, currently being prepared by Dr Chris Singleton of Hull University;

• evaluations of Every Child a Reader, including Reading Recovery, carried out by the Every Child a Chance Trust and the Institute of Education;

• a recently published interim evaluation of the No to Failure Project’s identification of children at risk of dyslexia/ specific learning difficulties;

• No to Failure Project’s final evaluation of the progress made by children identified as being at risk of dyslexia/ specific learning difficulties who have received specialist dyslexia teaching, which the Project expects to publish at the end of this year.

Sir Jim Rose will also consult with the No to Failure Project and other dyslexia organisations in considering his recommendations. He has agreed to prepare a report containing his recommendations early in 2009.

If you would like to receive regular updates on information about education, you can get these free of charge. Just go to http://www.schools.co.uk/subscribe.html where you can sign up. If you are in the business of selling to schools you can sign up to the Education Marketing news group by emailing www.education-marketing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Tony Attwood

Hamilton House Mailings plc reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB. Phone 01536 399 000.

Below there is a list of questions - this list is just one day’s worth of question.

What we do is forward these questions on to subscribers to our news and information service - and lo and behold they send in the answers.

Here’s the questions - you might find one of them relates directly to a product or service you supply.  And even if you don’t you’ll appreciate that next week or the week after we could be dealing with something that is right up your street.

And if we are, I’ll tell you something very interesting and unexpected, right after this list.

1. I wonder if you can help me with a query.  We are an independent school and need to create a new admissions register.  We wonder if you have any information on where we might be able to buy one or if any of the other schools on your mailing circulation would be able to provide a prompt response.
2. Rats - any ideas from rural schools on safe ways to reduce the population??
3. Hand driers VS paper towels: Anybody looked into whether elec hand driers are more economical than paper towels?? We seem to use up LOADS of paper towels, and the Governors need to be convinced that this is not the way to go…..
4. Cleaning schedules: Do other schools use cleaning schedules for their cleaners to ensure that all areas in school are given a deep clean periodically?
5. What email system do the majority of schools use.  We are experiencing major problems at present with our email provider and wonder whether any schools use Google Mail.  If your school does use Google Mail what is your opinion of it?  What are the safety levels?
6. Can I ask how schools without a dedicated HR/Personnel function manage the ever increasing workload connected with Staff Recruitment/Retention, Staff Policies and Procedures and Employment Law etc especially from, though not exclusively so, a Support Staff perspective.  I seek guidance from an independent school viewpoint – do state schools generally have an HR Dept?
7. I would like to update our software to monitor school fund account and would like to ask other administrators which software they currently use and which they would recommend.
8. I would like to hear from anybody who has or is using the Tucasi School Cash Office and the Dinner Money Management software they are part of RM. I have seen a demo and it looks fantastic, but before I go ahead I would like to have some feedback on it. It would also be very helpful if anybody could recommend any other similar Dinner Money Management software they are aware of. I also would like to hear from any administrators who are or have used RM Integris web based MIS system. This is also something that I am looking into and recommendations would be much appreciated; especially if anyone can recommend a MIS that has a really good HR section. Obviously with the new workforce census coming into place the MIS would need to be compatible.

Now here is my “interesting point”.  All these questions came from school adminstrators who have subscribed to the School Admin News Service that we run.

School administrators, as you can see, are making all sorts of decisions day by day - but amazingly no one is mailing them with information or thoughts on this or any other topic.

If you feel your product or service ought to be considered by the administrators of the school, do give me a call.  We can mention it on this news service, or on an email to all schools, or on the weekly printed newsletter we send out, or as a leaflet in a shared mailing, or….

Interesting, don’t you think?  (Well I do).

Tony Attwood 01536 399 000

According to the government over 1000 school building projects in 72 local authorities are already under way in the first six waves of BSF, to give all secondary school pupils world-class teaching and learning facilities. And they now want the remaining 76 local authorities to join the programme as fast as possible.

The new public consultation is on managing waves the programme and deciding the order in which those authorities not yet in the programme will join BSF. Details are below, but if I may put my concern in first…. I have been continuously annoyed by the way that plans for building new schools have focussed on nice designs rather than any concept of what will be the approach to teaching and learning in ten years time - not least taking into account the issues of where information technology is teaching us.

There is just one report that does bring together the two issues - the school’s structure and traditions on the one hand, and the new approach to education through ICT on the other. It is published by the British Council and I found it one of the most interesting things I’ve read this year. It is “Learning Technologies and Schools of the Future” and is available as a download at

http://www.bcse.uk.net/downloads/IC8647_BCSE_Brochure_V7.pdf 12

BSF-funding schools have opened so far – plus 1100 primary, secondary and special schools, built or almost completely refurbished since 1997 outside the programme. By 2011, the government says at least 200 new or refurbished schools will be opening a year.

Overall the government promises that schools’ annual capital spending will rise seven-fold in real terms from under £700million in 1997-98 to £6.669 billion this year, with funding rising again to £8.235 billion in 2010-11. The three year settlement includes another £9.3billion earmarked for BSF over the next three years. Meanwhile this is what the government says for English schools…

• all local authorities will have a chance to join BSF as soon as they have plans to deliver at least an initial, streamlined project of four or five schools – including tackling the most under-performing or failing schools and those in pockets of deprivation;

• BSF will have a wider range of criteria to decide how projects should be prioritised – including areas with major social regeneration and development projects; schools with the poorest infrastructure to avoid costly short-term patch and mend; and areas which are planning wider community facilities, including Children’s Centres, extended school facilities and broader provision for young people;

• local authorities will join BSF in a rolling programme when they are ready – rather than waiting for formal, set year-on-year launches;

• some projects will no longer be required to include schools in the same geographical part of a local authority area. This would give local authorities greater flexibility to invest in schools and target funding exactly where it is needed; and

• neighbouring local authorities should work closer in setting up Local Education Partnerships (LEPs), to get the most efficient procurement, planning and building programmes in place.

All 76 local authorities, that have not yet joined the programme, will be invited to revise their existing expressions of interests between August and October – which will decide how projects will be grouped in the future.

The next authorities to enter programme will be announced next spring and the exact roll-out will continue to be dependent on future public spending decisions. The consultation runs from 9 April until 4 July. It is available at:

 http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/

Background

Building Schools for the Future’s first six waves have been launched, and 90 projects in 72 authorities have now been started in the programme, prioritised on social and educational need. Additional “One School Pathfinder” funding has been allocated to a further 39 authorities which are later in the programme, to enable them to renew their neediest schools, and 81 authorities have academies open or in development.

In all, about 1000 schools are now being renewed through these strategic programmes, including around 180 which are becoming Academies.

To date, 12 schools with BSF funding have been completed, a further 35 are expected to open in 2008-09, and 18 schemes have reached financial close. There are also around 90 Academy projects currently being delivered via BSF or the National Framework. The £21.9billion funding settlement for 2008-09; 2009-10 and 2010-11 was announced last October.

Partnerships for Schools is the delivery agency for Building Schools for the Future. PfS was established in April 2004 as a non-department public body and is operated and funded under a joint venture between the Department for Children, Schools and Families and Partnerships UK.

If you would like to receive regular updates on news relating to education send an email to education-marketing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Tony Attwood