Peter Tait Education

Working Together

At
the inaugural Pressburst Conference which set out to look at ways to improve
the communications and marketing in independent schools, much was made of the
threats to the sector and how to respond to them. The list focused on a number of external
issues including rising staff and energy costs, political ambivalence, public
antipathy or even hostility towards independent schools and the increasing
social divide, but there was mention also of how we can help ourselves. To the
larger political and financial issues, we rely on the associations to respond
on our behalf or should do (there are a number of heads of leading schools who
are regularly asked for comments by the media whose responses sometimes place
the interests of their own schools over those of the sector). There is a danger that their messages will be
misconstrued to represent the flavour of the sector as a whole and if too brash,
boastful or patronising, can do considerable damage to our public image. To
ensure we are all pulling together, there are a number of steps schools can
follow.

First,
manage your social media and know where your comments and images are going to
end up – which is often not where they are intended: Photographs of students studying glaciers in
Iceland or volcanology in Hawaii, Michelin star plates of food or playing polo may
be popular with parents, but not helpful in the wider milieu.

In
the drive to award more bursaries – itself, a most commendable and necessary
initiative –ask what you can do for a child you are admitting to your school,
not what they can do for you. Asset stripping from local schools can engender
ill-feeling. Why not take an average student and offer him or her the
opportunity to improve themselves without expecting something in return.

Work
together. Heads who attack other school types (and a recent attack on
single-sex girls schools by an HMC Head comes to mind) do nothing for the sector.
This can be seen in the unseemly scramble
for publicity after league table results reflects badly on schools and are
meaningless especially when schools obfuscate and select their own
interpretations and misleading when so many schools are often highly selective.
A more dignified response would be to
make no response at all – or better, pull out of the tables.

Take
time to work with schools in your local area, especially those you draw from. Prep
schools, in particular, need to be treated respectfully and not taken for
granted. Invading their historic patch by dropping down to Year 7 entry or going
Co-ed at Years 7&8 or making unreasonable demands in terms of scholarship
exams does not help and could well lead to more preparatory schools feeling alienated and directing
parental traffic elsewhere including towards local grammar and new academies.

Don’t
fill your websites with lists of the places your students travel to (I counted
24 different countries plus ‘North and South America’ listed on one website) or
on facilities. Focus on student achievements, not things that cost money or
simply flaunt the resources and buildings. Eschew the arms race and be more
responsible with fees which in terms of social image and parental appreciation eager
a bit less profligacy is a win-win.

Use
social twitter to promote your school’s values and ethos, not just its
successes. Some heads can make a significant impression by doing so (and at the
risk of embarrassing them, Mark Mortimer at Warminster and Shaun Fenton at Reigate Grammar do this very well indeed)
and by using social media to emphasis what their schools stand for, and what
they do rather than what they have.

Highlight
the achievements who have done well in the charitable sector or in service
fields rather than in sport, media or business.

Work
with your local community even if it means trimming back your traditional
fixture lists to be more involved with local schools and look for ways to
ensure your students are part of. and not living apart from, other local
schools and students.

And
last, remember that your best marketing tools are your parents, teachers and
students. Ask, how well to they serve and represent your values and ethos
whether on the side-lines of matches (parents), in the way they present
themselves when in the public eye (students) or in their loyalty and advocacy
in the community (staff). That’s where
the greatest effort should be directed.

All
little things, but they might just make a difference in helping dissipate some
of the ill-feeling that prevails at present towards the sector.

Too Far Too
Soon

“School
trips are an essential part of every child’s education and by not finding a way
to make them happen we are failing in our duty to prepare them for life.”
Judith
Hackitt, NASUWT Conference, 2011

“It is wrong
to wrap children in cotton wool as they grow up. Trips and getting out of the
classroom should be part and parcel of school life”.
Ed Balls,
Conference for Outdoor Learning, Greenwich, 2008

“Health and
safety is one of the main issues. It’s impossible to take large groups anywhere
really interesting, so coursework is limited to local areas and small-scale
studies.” Comment to an ISI inspector from
a 16 year old geography student

“Harrow
takes pupils on many excursions abroad each year, and has recently visited
Japan, China, North America, South America, Tanzania, Canada, Germany, Italy,
South Korea, South Africa, Tunisia, Malta, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Namibia &
Botswana, Kenya, Spain, Brunei, Spain, Australia & New Zealand, and the
Himalayas.”
Harrow
School Website

A recent report that tells of declining
numbers of children visiting some of our major cultural and historical
institutions, particularly the great art galleries and museums, makes
disturbing reading. Recent figures released this week suggest that thousands of
children are missing out on visiting such national institutions as York’s
National railway Museum, London’s Science Museum and the Natural History Museum
because of funding cuts. Further, twelve field study centres are about to close
because of cuts to local funding with many others under threat.

Until recently, health and safety and the
need for exhaustive risk assessments have shouldered most of the blame for
deterring teachers from taking children out of school.
In making these decisions, teachers were encouraged by teaching unions who
advised members against leading trips for fear of being sued should anything go
wrong. As the recession has started to dig deeper, however, it is more often
financial reasons that are cited. The average cost of residential school-trips
rose fivefold between 2002 and 2007 and while the rate of increase has slowed,
the damage has been done. Schools and families, both under the financial cosh,
no longer have the wherewithal to cope with such additions to school and family
budgets, especially as so many trips are now tendered out. Partly to protect
themselves, schools have come to rely on companies to organise their trips and
excursions, which in turn has led to fewer students being able to afford the
opportunity to see life out of the classroom. As well as the demands of time
required to plan such trips, students also have more grandiose views on what a
school trip should be. Sadly the days of travelling by coach, of packed lunches
and fending for oneself in self-catering hostels with all the commensurate
social and practical benefits are no longer, not just because of a lack of
imagination and energy, but because of the constraints of bureaucracy and time.

The same malaise is evident in trips abroad.
Apart from trips for field work or to our great galleries and museums, many
schools make use of the proximity of Europe for such purposes as studying the
battlefields of World War One or for studying foreign languages. Such trips
should be encouraged and can be done prudently with some careful planning and
assistance from companies.

By way of contrast, there is an increasing
trend for wealthier schools – mainly independent schools – to treat the world
as their classroom. Reading prospectuses and magazines from such schools is
like reading a fist full of travel brochures, full of the remote and exotic. In
a recent letter to the Daily Telegraph (14 May, 2011) a teacher from Wellington
College recounted that he had driven a minibus with nine students aboard to
play matches in Manchester and Wakefield. Of the nine, all had been to Europe,
eight had been to South Africa, six had visited Australia or New Zealand and
three had visited the Caribbean, all on previous school trips. Only two had
been to Lancashire and one to Yorkshire, neither through the school. Sadly,
while each trip has its justification, often philanthropic, to help communities
in the third world, one wonders about the effect of showing children so much of
the world before they have learnt to pay their way in it. In the worst
instances, some such trips smack of neo-colonialism or paternalism, at best. It
is hard to escape the feeling that while students have been privileged to visit
exotic parts of the world, and no doubt gained a great deal from the
experience, many would benefit from staying at home and seeing a little more of
their own countries. Such indulgences by schools, and the pressures they place
on their parents to fund them need to be considered very carefully indeed.
After all, when children aged 12 and 13 go on cricket tours to South Africa or
New Zealand, you do wonder what is left.

“Too often
travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the
conversation.” Elizabeth
Drew