MARKETING Building up your brand


We may not like it, but having a strong brand is increasingly


important for today’s schools.Deborah Benady offers some advice


is that the process of getting the branding right is an opportunity to think about what you want your school to do for its students and how you want people to see your school. When we began in 2007, the school had a real


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reputational problem. Opened on the site of a failing boys’ school we had to show that our school was as different from its previous incarnation as it could be. We had taken over a neighbouring Catholic primary


school and became a mixed all-through school catering for students from three to 16, in a new, state-of-the-art building, with new staff and an aspirational curriculum specialising in business and enterprise. Our problem was how to disassociate ourselves


from the previous school, which – having been there for 100 years – was a local landmark. Starting as a top grammar, St Joseph’s steadily declined and achieved the dubious status of being the worst school in Europe (in its final year just four per cent of pupils got five A* to C GCSEs including English and maths). As we had no reputation beyond not being St Joe’s,


eveloping a brand for your school is not a frivolous activity, but about being able to communicate what your school stands for –both internally to students and staff, and externally to parents, prospective parents and the community.


Something we have learned at St Matthew Academy


we realised the solution had to start with the branding, which had to communicate what we now were as well as what we were no longer. We were introduced to a marketing company who


helped us to think through exactly what we wanted to say about ourselves. The first thing we learned through this process is that the corporate identity – the logo, colours, design – is not the brand. Our brand consists of the values that drive us. During discussions we realised our Catholic ethos


was the most important thing about us. That helped us create our mission statement: “To provide a positive, inclusive, Catholic environment for learning and growth which promotes excellence and inspires each individual to discover, develop and fulfil their spiritual, intellectual and personal potential and to become lifetime learners.” Everything else stemmed from there. Having been


given the name of St Matthew by our sponsors, the Diocese of Southwark, we took inspiration from the St Matthew Gospel: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.” Our motto became “Let your light shine” and it now sits under a star logo (pictured, right) in which each ray is a different size – reflecting the diversity of our pupils and their talents. Our internal communications, website, prospectus,


Facebook, Twitter and media relations are all informed by the brand values and resultant corporate identity, using them to spotlight the achievements of children and staff. The brand is also easy to communicate externally


– prospective parents can visualise their child’s talents being nurtured. It helps drive our relationships with the local community and businesses, who give us support through our enterprise specialism. Over the last five years we have developed the


brand – updated it to reflect the school as it is, as opposed to what we hoped it would be. That has meant understanding the whole range of ways that we communicate our identity, from the language we use to how our children behave, from how well we communicate with parents to how we react to complaints. Our brand enables us to identify our school in a


crowded market. Since we opened, most schools in Lewisham have been rebuilt, and everywhere results


Let’s scrap the curriculum! Psycho babble


I’VE LONG worried that the national curriculum undermines precisely what it sets out to do: encourage well-rounded learning and achievement. In fact, the regimented approach to learning often causes students to disengage, largely because much of it seems irrelevant. Learning and memory are profoundly influenced by relevance and interest; if you fail to spark and inspire early on, chances are that the work will be learned for exams and then largely forgotten, as it was never practically applied. Much has been reported this week


about Michael Gove’s leaked plans to scrap the secondary national cur- riculum as part of a return to O level style examinations. If we did get rid of the curricu-


lum, this could provide teachers with the flexibility to gear their courses to individual classes and even students, and the freedom to personalise learning according to their own talents and interests. How much more inspiring it


would be for pupils to be taught by someone passionate about their subject, who is free to teach using the tools with which they may themselves have been taught – or the tools that are developed according to the particular strengths and weak- nesses of the class. I imagine that even the best teachers are cur-


rently stifled by an over-rigorous curriculum and that if it was scrapped they would gain confidence in their ability to impart knowledge through more diverse means to create a more rounded, balanced and relevant education for our students. In Canada, where I grew up, our teachers decided


upon the content of the course. We often read the lat- est Pulitzer prize-winning novel and a biography or two, alongside books that reflected our interests as a class. If we loved a particular author, we’d often read the whole gamut before moving onto something else. In the end, we probably read four or five times


the number of books that kids read today under the national curriculum, largely because we were driven to do so out of curiosity, enjoyment and relevance.


Surely that, in the end, is the educational mission


of a secondary school course? Inspiring learning to the extent that it nurtures a life-long passion and a voyage of further discovery? It’s also worth considering the possible application


of Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (learning styles), which are increasingly gaining favour with educationalists, particularly in the US. Gardner viewed intelligence as “the capacity to solve problems or to fashion products that are valued in one or more cultural setting”, and believed that the seven differ- ent kinds of intelligence allow seven different ways to teach – rather than one. He said: “Powerful con-


straints that exist in the mind can be mobilised to introduce a particular concept (or whole sys- tem of thinking) in a way that children are most like-


ly to learn it and least likely to distort it. Paradoxically, constraints can be sugges-


tive and ultimately freeing.” Several studies have con-


firmed that Gardner’s interest in deep understanding, performance, exploration and creativity are not eas- ily accommodated within an orientation to


the “delivery” of a detailed curriculum. Adjusting the content of subjects to reflect the various types of intelligence within the classroom (all of which can be exploited) will


encourage teachers to look beyond the existing, shal- low and confined system of curriculum and testing and actively engage with individual minds. How much more rewarding teaching will be; how


much more rewarding education will be for students if there is genuine freedom to experiment, explore and direct in response to genuine interest. The potential for positive progression is potentially limitless. See you in September!


• Karen Sullivan is a best-selling author, psychologist and childcare expert. She returns in September.


online www.nasuwt.org.uk one hassle-free phone call 0121 457 6211


*free full membership for the rest of 2012 when you agree to pay your 2013 subscription by the convenient method of direct debit.


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are rising. Several local schools have become all- through, so the features that were distinctive to us as a new academy are no longer unique. However, our defining message of a Catholic approach to education which sees every child as an individual to be nurtured and cultivated, still – we believe – helps us stand out from the crowd.


SecEd


• Deborah Benady is marketing and media manager at St Matthew Academy in Blackheath, London. St Matthew offers an advice service for schools interested in improving their marketing. For information email deb@stmatthewacademy.co.uk


Creating your brand


• Work out what your values are first – these help shape everything else.


• Schools have to “live their values” – if you want a reputation for being compassionate, your behaviour policy has to reflect that.


• Schools are businesses in a competitive market – it pays to get the professionals in so that your corporate identity, website and communications reflect a professional organisation.


• Make sure every member of the school understands and “buys-in” to the brand values.


• Every communication is an opportunity to get your brand across – letters, newsletters, social media, school trips, behaviour on local buses, relationships with local businesses etc.


• Once you have a corporate identity, insist everyone uses it correctly every time, in every email, newsletter or article that goes out.


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