Stakeholder Management and Media Relations

The West London Academy needed PR support for both press and communications with parents, staff and the wider community.

The new Academy had significant reputation management and messaging challenges to overcome in the local community and wanted to change perceptions and increase intake.

We devised and delivered a strategy for their first year of operation as they moved from being three separate schools to an all age Academy.

Working with the Principal and his senior team we agreed a stakeholder management strategy which included:

• Stakeholder management of local businesses
• Parents’ newsletters
• Staff newsletters
• Production of a film narrated by students
• A prospectus for the primary school
• Booklets for reception, nursery and primary age pupils
• A portable exhibition
• Postcards and a Christmas card
• School gate surveys

The strategy ensured that key stakeholders gained a better understanding of why the Academy was being developed and the benefits it would bring to the whole community.

We also provided a media relations service which worked proactively with local and national media to underpin the aims and objectives of the stakeholder strategy.

Media Relations and Crisis Management

In July 2005 the Academy had its first Ofsted report which was highly critical of many aspects of the school, although there were pockets of praise in the report. This followed hard on the heels of a wave of negative press coverage of the Academies Programme.

Our aims were:

• To limit the damage from the worst critical comments in the report.
• To explain that to turn around a failing school takes a number of years, not a few months.
• To secure more evenly balanced reporting by drawing attention to the positive comments in the Ofsted report
• To protect the future of the Academy by ensuring local parents, students and teachers continue to give it their support.

We agreed a coordinated approach with key partners, going through the draft Ofsted report highlighting negative and positive comments, and identifying clear and consistent lines.

We identified signs of progress and given that the inspectors had criticised the number of exclusions, we decided to go to the national and local press with a strong defence of the Academy’s policy on exclusion. The statement also welcomed the fact that the inspectors would return in six months time to look at the school again.

As part of the strategy, it was suggested that all Academies should be visited every six months but the inspection reports should reflect an understanding of the context and history of the Academies. A facility visit was arranged for the local press to tour the new school building weeks before it was opened.

On eve of publication of the report we worked the media to highlight an article written for the BBC News website by Ofsted’s own chief inspector for schools, David Bell. In this he praised the progress being made by Academies but said they needed longer to prove themselves (one of the West London Academy’s points).

The next day, The Guardian reported ‘schools inspector backs Academy programme’ – and was even handed. The Times also picked up on David Bell with only a one-line mention of the West London Academy report. The Independent put the West London Academy’s case on exclusions quoting the Principal: ‘The Government preaches zero tolerance and we are rebuked for exclusions... it needs some joined up thinking.’ Of the popular press, only the Daily Mail covered the story with a splash. Instead of baiting the Academy, they went for the exclusions story and Alastair Falk’s declaration about joined-up thinking. To help the Daily Mail nail this story we provided an earlier speech by Minister Jacqui Smith when she had demanded zero tolerance.

Coverage in the Times Education Supplement was excellent, quoting Alastair Falk extensively and highlighting the need for more time for Academies to come good, and the need for a different kind of Ofsted report.

This was reinforced by a positive editorial saying that Alastair Falk was right, five years to turn around a failing school is ‘fair enough’. Local coverage was initially hard hitting, but after the arranged press tour of the new Academy building softened up the following week with ‘Success may be at the end of a steep learning curve’. The Ealing Times (the free paper and read by the majority of parents) was more gung-ho – ‘Academy hits back at criticism’ – full of positive responses.

Our strategy proved a success. By identifying other messages which were as newsworthy – if not more so – than the original story, we were able to minimise what could have been extremely negative coverage and reposition the Principal from ‘the head teacher of a school in freefall’ to a well-informed commentator on educational issues. Working closely with key partners such as the then DfES was also central to the success of the strategy.