And the Schools Secretary, also confirmed details on how the Government will reduce spending by the DCSF and its partners.

According to the DCSF School Business Managers have been shown to save schools up £30,000 in a year.  The National College for Leadership of Schools and Children Services is to invest £5 million to fund 250 school business managers next year, each working with four or five schools, with a further 250 more in each of the following three years.

This means that schools in England now have access to:

·        school business managers working to save money in clusters of primary schools

·        Free consultancy support on how to save money

·        Advice and guidance from the DCSF and National College on partnership working, procurement and delivering value for money

The DCSF has said it will take the lead on saving money by:

- Reducing spending on Government agencies by £135M
- Cutting start-up costs for extended services by £100M
- Reducing bursaries for initial teacher training, saving £50M
- £21M savings on DCSF back office and communications spending, including moving Teachers TV online.

Together all these savings add up to over £300 million over 2 years, with work underway to identify a further £200 million worth of savings, as agreed with the Treasury at the Pre-Budget Report.

The new school business managers will work across for four or five primary schools, helping them save significant money off their budgets, so that the schools’ front line service is maintained and improved.

Currently only a third of all primary schools have business managers. Those that do report that on average, they are generating an additional £30,000 a year for the schools, through managing budgets effectively, maximising resources and securing additional income streams.

This announcement is in addition to the free consultancy advice that all schools can access on how best to save money. 96 per cent of schools who have received this consultancy have said they would recommend it to other schools.

In November DCSF published a discussion document to help schools hare best practice on making the best use of resources and NCSL have organised a series of conferences where schools have shared best practice.

Areas on which schools believe they can save money include on procurement and back office functions and through federations and collaboration.

The Government believes that savings can be made centrally, and through its partner Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs).

All NDPBs are expected to make efficiency savings, but in particular the Government plans to save around 40 per cent of Becta’s budget (£45M over the two years 2011-13) and 30 per cent (£55M over the two years 2011-13) of theTraining and Development Agency (TDA) non-teacher training budget.

Other savings will be found through cutting start-up funding for extended services (£100m), and reducing golden hellos for teachers (£50m) in subjects that already have large numbers of new applications.

In addition, the DCSF will reduce is communications budget by £5 million. This will include moving Teachers TV, which is now used by a quarter of the schools workforce, so that it will only be available online, saving £1 million a year.

Background…

1. Pilots run by the National College show that head teachers with access to school business managers report reduced workloads, with higher-level school business manager role having a potential to free up to 30 per cent of their time.

There was also evidence that the new roles are allowing schools to release funds by maximising existing resources and engaging clusters of schools to work together strategically.

2. In addition, the groups of schools will also receive:

- targeted support from existing SBMs and groups of schools which are already realising the benefits;
- continuous professional development from the National College for the appointed School Business Directors; and,
- a range of appropriate advice covering achieving better value for money, and changing models of school organisation and leadership.

3. Last November The Government launched a website - marketed at schools offering a huge range of financial advice and support for schools:

http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/management/schoolfunding/schoolfinance/letstalkresources/

The support package for schools includes:

- Free national consultancy programme for every maintained school in England - giving tailored, timely advice to schools that request help and guidance on how they can make the best use of their resources:
- Wider school workforce - how schools plan and manage their staffing;
- Leadership - how much time and experience school leaders have to focus on delivering value for money;
- Strategic management - how schools approach financial and resource management, including linking the two with school improvement;
- Collaboration and partnership - how schools work together - and with other organisations - to improve outcomes together;
- Challenge and Governance - the role of the Governing Body in supporting delivery of value for money; and
- Procurement performance - how schools approach procurement.

5. NDPB savings

Building on the 21st Century Schools White Paper, which set out the strategy to devolve more responsibility and power to schools, the government says it is possible to cut back the level of support TDA and Becta provide to schools, while retaining their strategic expertise and ability to concentrate at a system level on the improvements that are needed.

6. Extended services start up funding

Over 95 per cent of schools are now offering access to extended services - and all should be doing so later this year. Start up funding was designed to be used to support schools to develop sustainable extended services and to overcome barriers that might have prevented them from developing extended services.

Over time extended services should become sustainable either through charging, for childcare for example, or through reconfiguring funding strands at local level through children’s trusts, or by pooling budgets to support extended services through schools. Funding to support schools in offering extended services, and to subsidise those on low incomes to participate, is protected through the PBR settlement for schools.

7. Reductions in bursaries for initial teacher training

The Government will continue to protect the initial training and recruitment of teachers to secure the best in the future. However, given the very buoyant recruitment market in many areas, it is possible to make reductions to the level of bursaries for recruitment to Initial Teacher Training which will generate savings of the order of £50m in the 2011-13 period.

There are now enough quality candidates coming forward in subjects such as Music, RE, modern languages and biology so the to offer bursaries at their previous level (£6,000-£9,000) for some subjects is less.

This announcement was made in October 2009 and it will come into for postgraduate students starting in September 2010. A base level of £4,000 will still apply to all postgraduate course with some subjects eligible for bursaries of £6,000 and £9,000 as before.

8. Communications

The £5 million savings from communications and marketing expenditure is achievable through making more information available digitally, and reducing money spent on printing and publication of documents that the public would rather see online only.

Teachers TV has been running for four and a half years and now has 230,000 people using the service every month - a quarter of schools workforce. Viewers are increasingly accessing Teachers TV online with demand for the more traditional TV route falling - and on current projections by next year more people will be accessing online and on demand rather than through broadcast anyway.

From August this year the Government will turn off the broadcast channel, saving £1M a year.

9. Reductions in central administration costs of DCSF

DCSF staff numbers have been reduced by 1465. 1130 jobs have been moved out of London and the South East. Premises costs have been cut by £12 million a year and significant reductions of £36.3 million made on back office costs, with £8 million per year in efficiencies going forward from HR, procurement and finance costs.

As normal HHM is offering to undertake direct mail and email work at a substantial discount before and during the Easter holiday period.

In terms of the direct mail we don’t have to post out your material during the Easter period - we just need to have the items in the warehouse and be able to make up the packs over Easter.  We can then hold them and mail them later.

Here’s the timetable

Direct mail work to educational addresses that we can complete between 20 March and April 9 will have a discount on labels, envelopes, and labour of 30%.   The mail can then be held for up to a further month before being mailed out.

School holidays run for most schools from April 1 to April 18th, resuming on the 19th.  (Good Friday is April 2, and a small number of unreconstructed schools will take their holiday from March 29th.)

In terms of email:

Emails on the named lists (i.e. the subscription, personal and preference lists) despatched from March 26th until April 16th will be charged at half price.   We have found in the past holidays that you can get quite a good response in the holidays, since many teachers pick up their personal emails at home.  Those that don’t pick them up on return to school - but since we only send out one email per week to each teacher, they only have one or two to read.

Final note - the amount of direct mail work we can take at the 30% discount, and the number of emails we can transmit at the 50% discount are very strictly limited, so please do call sooner rather than later.

Please call 01536 399 000 to discuss with the sales team, or email Sales@hamilton-house.com

Details of our email services are on www.emails.gs  and details of our solo mailing services are on www.solo.ac  

If you are doing the mailing yourself you can of course buy on line, as usual, or buy through our sales team.   Details are at http://www.hamilton-house.com/gateways/lists.html

Tony Attwood

Schools have to spend between 92% and 95% of the 2009/10 budget by April 5th - which means that this is now the “last minute spending” season.

It is still possible to get out solo and shared promotions - especially if you have leaflets already to run.

The alternative is to use email - but the difference here is that although an email can be put together more quickly than a leaflet can be printed, we do limit the number of emails that go out to teachers on the premium lists (the ones that reach teachers direct rather than going via the school administrator).

Obviously everyone makes their own decisions on such matters - we limit the number of emails each teacher gets as our research shows that this puts the subsequent response rate.   In other words you sell more because we mail the lists less.

Other companies treat their lists in a different way.  But if you do want to get in an email before the end of the financial year it might be worth booking it in now, rather than later.  

There’s details of all our email services on www.emails.gs or you can call 01536 399 000.  Shared mailings are on www.shared.org.uk and solo mailings on www.solo.ac

Tony Attwood

It may seem utterly bizarre, but if you email a school and mention the name of the Schools Secretary in the email, in 37% of cases the email will not arrive.

The reason for this is that schools use filter systems to screen out what are considered to be unacceptable messages that are entering the school system.

Obviously we all want to protect children from inappropriate material, but unfortunately some of the screening systems used are left over from the stone age of digital technology, and have the effect of rejecting emails which use everyday language but which contain a single word which, in a different context, might have a different meaning.

The fact that most school pupils will know (and quite possibly use) the word every day is irrelevant in this context - your email (which is aimed at teachers) will be blocked because of the blunderbus approach of the software.

But, as you may have noticed, I said the number of schools that will block the name of the Schools Secretary is 37%.   Choose a different word with two meanings and the percentage will go up or down.

This is because different parts of the country use different blocking systems, some more sophisticated than others, some so utterly bizarre they border on the incomprehensible.  Some were installed so long along no one remembers they are there - or how to get rid of them!

None of the companies that provide such blocking software will provide a list of banned words, but over time we have been able to put together such a list, both from experience and from the fact that we have worked with a number of local authorities, school internet service providers and independent companies who create school systems.

Because of this, when Hamilton House sends out an email we check it to ensure that the wording is compliant with this rather eccentric and bizarre system - so we can advise you to remove a particular word or phrase, and thus increase the readership level.

If you have any questions about this approach - please do get in touch.  You can call me on 01536 399 013 - or email Tony@hamilton-house.com

Tony Attwood

This is a story that I saw on UK Education News (www.ukeducationnews.co.uk)   It just struck me as so amusing (and I am not sure why) I thought I’d take a day off from all the serious marketing stuff, and share it with you.

Countryside Ban for Children because mums cannot read maps and don’t like mud.

“The countryside is off-limits because it is out of the comfort zone of many affluent, suburban parents, according to researchers.

A lack of map reading skills was one barrier, while fear of their children being hurt, running-off or getting dirty was also cited. As a result most parents limited their excursions to country parks and farms that catered for families.”

The research quoted comes from Hertfordshire University research. The research was carried out, I must confess, at a prep school in the south of England, so maybe the results are not universally applicable, but there are still some interesting findings…

Debbie Pearlman Hougie, senior lecturer in rural geography at the university, said: “None of the mothers I spoke to could read a map.

“I put a 1:25,000 Ordinance Survey map on the table and they didn’t know where to start, they also didn’t know anything about rights of way.

“There were stories of families who had gone for a walk and ended up on someone’s land and got shouted at and never went back.

“They did not know how to make up circular walks or work out where it might be safe to go cycling with children.

“I think, with this group of people, their fear of danger is exaggerated,” she said. “They are very scared of children not only being run over, but being stolen even when they were with them.

“There also seems to be an obsession about cleanliness. Perhaps because children are in expensive clothes, mud seems to be abhorrent.”

Ms Pearlman Hougie said parents had doubts about children’s stamina levels and were worried that if they set out for a five mile walk, their children would give up half way round.

“Exposure to the countryside did not seem a priority,” she said

“At the same time children were not pestering their parents for kite flying or rambling, even though the older children were very aware that going walking was good for you and there was a definite desire to want to escape to exciting places where they could get lost.”

Poul Christensen, chairman of Natural England said: “Children are being denied the fundamental sense of independence and freedom in nature that their parents enjoyed.

“Our research shows that contact with nature has halved in a generation, and that the overwhelming majority of children now want more opportunities to play outdoors.

“Whether through pond dipping or tree climbing, nature-based activities can play an important role in the educational and social development of children.

“Society must question its priorities in providing safe open spaces for play – the money spent on parks and trees in this country is a fraction of that spent on the roads that cause parents safety concerns.”

The Telegraph also adds that the proportion of primary children walking to school has fallen to less than half, compared to 62 per cent in 1989.

Research in 1971 showed that 80 per cent of seven to eight-year-olds got to school on their own. By 1990, that had dropped to nine per cent.

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There’s more news - generally of a more serious nature - each day on Education Marketing Newsletter - to subscribe free of charge send an email to Education-Marketing-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com and just click reply when you get a message back.

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UK Education News  - www.ukeducationnews.co.uk

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Original story - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/countryside/7279301/Countryside-ban-for-children-because-mums-cannot-read-maps-and-hate-mud.html

Tony Attwood

I wrote it, and I genuinely believe in it.

If you would like to read it, just click on this link

http://bit.ly/XVGoL

If you want to read the whole list of our free reports, go to…

http://www.hamilton-house.com/howto.html

If you have any questions or comments on this report or any of our reports, or come to that anything else, from the quality of the snow, to Arsenal’s performance last weekend, please call me on 01536 399 013.

If you want to stay up to date with issues relating to marketing to schools in the UK you can subscribe to our daily free news service… just email education-marketing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com 

And if you want to see the daily news about education in the UK (as opposed to marketing into education) take a look at www.ukeducationnews.co.uk - it updates every three minutes.

Tony Attwood

Schools in England have to spend between 92% and 95% of their annual funding by 5th April, and it looks like heads are giving out the message in many schools that trying to hold money back is going to be risky.

This final half of term leading up to the Easter holidays (Good Friday is 2nd April) should therefore be the best part of the school year for selling.

The options for selling are:

Solo mailing: the most expensive, but also normally gets the best response.  About 45p per school all included.  Ideal for testing, but because this is likely to be a time of good sales it is probably not the best time for testing.

Shared mailings: these continue weekly until a couple of weeks before the end of term - about 8p a school

Emails to named teachers on the subscription lists at their own address - 20p per address including despatch - these teachers have asked to be on the list.   However only one per week per teacher is allowed, and some lists are already fairly booked up - worth enquiring sooner rather than later.

Emails to non-subscribing named teachers at their own address - 18p per address - but as above only one per week.

Emails to the generic lists of schools (to the school administrator for her to pass on) from 5p per address - no restriction on use.

www.UKEducationNews.co.uk - puts your article on the continuing news site, and gives it a permanent place on one of our retained news sites.  From £25.

Blogs should obviously be talking to teachers about the need to get money spent and the dangers of claw back being imposed - but beware of hammering the information.  It should be written in an advisory manner.

Call me if you would like to talk this through (01536 399 013), or email me on Tony@hamilton-house.com

Tony Attwood

Even if your email gets through to you and is not blocked by filters and the like, “e-mail fatigue” then clicks in.   The fact that you get 128 billion emails a minute means that you have had enough.

They have it worse in the US where only 10% of emails get looked at, while in Europe it is 13%.  

The point is that once you are reading a message, there is a chance that you will click on a link.  Getting clicks is not the issue, getting people to read the email in the first place is the big problem.

So what to do?

Firstly, stop sending emails to people who really don’t want to know.  If you have 5000 emails going out but only half a dozen people opening and clicking through, then the service providers (who have systems that do this sort of thing automatically) will start treating your transmissions as spam, and either send them straight to spam boxes, or refuse to deliver them altogether.

Second, use stunningly brilliant headlines.  Headlines that are so amazingly exciting and engaging that you force people to look, even if they are utterly disengaged.   “You are probably not reading this” is not the greatest headline in the world - but it is a damn site better than most that hit my in box each day. 

(It is certainly better than “Transfer of funding responsibilities is fast approaching!” which just landed in my in box.   Anything with an ! in the headline usually counts as rubbish with me).

Third, stop writing in “email speak”.  Use a natural conversational voice.  With an interesting personal accent.  And just one little moment that no one else could ever write.

Fourth, replicate the emails on a blog, so they stay in a permanent record.  This makes them public, and other people will find them and then be interested and join in.  This little piece for example started out on a news service, and then ended up here.  . 

If you want to talk about writing blogs and emails, or sending them out, or anything else come to that, call me on 01536 399 013 or email Tony@hamillton-house.com

Tony Attwood

Imagine that you have a product that makes you £25 profit on each sale (or indeed a group of products that tend to sell together so your average profit is £25).

It costs something in the order of £45 to mail 100 schools - so clearly you know that if you mail out the 100 schools and get two sales, you have covered your costs.   Three sales takes you into profit, and although hardly worth doing when mailing just 100 schools, this would mean that if you mailed 5000 schools you would make £1500.

But that mailing to 5000 schools will cost you around £2000 (less than the 45p each because of the bulk discounts).  And none of us likes to risk £2000 until we are quite sure the profit will be there - even when the profit after all the mailing costs are paid is £1500.

So the test is invaluable - and a test of just 200 schools for £90 generally will not put too much of a strain on finances.

And this is the point about solo mailings.  Because response rates of 3% can be achieved, it is possible to test with a mailing of just 200 schools for £90.  In the worst case scenario you get no sales, and have lost £90.  But you might get two sales and get your costs back.  OK you don’t have a viable campaign, but you have not lost anything.

And you know you are almost there.  A tweak somewhere in the copy, or the realisation that you are only selling to one particular type of school and so don’t need to mail the others could mean that you are readily able to up the response.

This is where solo really scores - for a minimal cost you can experiment, get the advert right, and then roll it out.

Indeed the whole of the marketing operation of First and Best books (our publishing company) was based around this - and the lessons we learned from hundreds of solo experiments are now being transferred to our email marketing campaigns.   What we have found is that the way we write the solo mailings, tells us how to write the email campaigns.

If you would like to talk about solo marketing to schools - including doing tests - do get in touch.  I am on 01536 399 013.

Tony Attwood

Hamilton House Mailings Ltd

Why blogs can be so amazingly effective and how to make them work for you

Blogs can be one of the most effective ways of bringing in customers that exists. And yet most companies don’t run them – largely on the grounds that they don’t quite understand how and why it all works.  Worse, some companies that do run blogs manage to run them without any success, because they make basic mistakes in the operation of the blog.

Two years ago I decided to experiment with a blog, starting absolutely from scratch, not writing about direct mail or email marketing, not writing about education, in fact not writing in an area where anyone knew anything about me, and not in any way trading on the name Hamilton House. 

In short I started as an absolutely anonymous writer.

In January 2008 (my first month of running the blog) I had 2,000 different readers visit the blog site. In January 2009 I had 60,000 individual readers on the site. And in January 2010 I had 170,000 individual readers on the site.  (The measurement of these numbers is quite strict and I am happy to discuss the parameters used – give me a call).

So, where did all these people come from? Or put another way, how can you get this level of readership to your site?

1.  People read the blog because you tell them to

If you are writing a blog it makes sense to email all your customers and potential customers to tell them about it.  Indeed some firms quite reasonably send copies of the blog occasionally to their potential customers as a way of drawing them in.  Obviously the blog has to be interesting to these people, but if it is, then you start by making your own audience.

2.  People read the blog because they find it on an accumulator site – such as UK Education News

If you are working with HHM then your blog can be listed on www.UKEducationNews.co.uk each time you run a new story.  It can be done totally automatically - and can bring in a continuous supply of new readers, who, if they like what they see, can return time and time again.  At the moment the average number of stories read by each visitor to the UK Ed News site is a staggering eight.  Try the site and see how you get stuck on it!

3.  People read the blog because of searching on Google

Blog articles get listed on Google and other search engines, so when someone does a search and picks up a phrase that is on your blog, they come and find the blog - and from there find your main website or give you a call.  The HHM site www.blog.schools.co.uk which does nothing but run adverts for our clients now gets around 28,000 individual readers on the site each month.  That means that each month the average article on the site gets 70 reads from people – and that goes on month after month after month. 

Remember also that those people reading the articles are people who have searched for the specific topic so they are already interested.  And that number is growing month by month. (People who just come to the site briefly and then never return are considered to be there by mistake and so are not counted.)

If you have not had an article on www.blog.schools.co.uk do give me a call to talk about it. 

4.  People forward the blog to friends

This takes a while to get going but once people start looking forward to your blog each day or each week then they start passing the message on.  On our test blog this did take about 10 months to start happening, but now, two years on, it is a major reason for our continuing growth. The more readers you have, the more people they are likely to tell.

5.  Other sites start picking up on the blog

Again this can take time but once it happens the numbers rise. After a year we started being picked up by other sites. After two years we have about half a dozen sites a day referring to us and giving us links – which of course helps take the site up the rankings and helps get more readers.

So why doesn’t everyone do it?

Because although you can get a readership fairly quickly it takes a little time to set up the blog and get going properly. Also it takes time to write it…   And it takes a bit of writing skill too, to entertain the customer and keep him or her returning.  The key element, incidentally, is the headline of each blog, and it is here that many people fall down.

If you would like to talk about blogs I am happy to discuss them with you – call me on 01536 399 013.  There’s no obligation in calling, but if you are interested, Hamilton House can write the blog and/or, administer the site for you.  Or you can simply buy into our www.blog.schools.co.uk site, or get listings on www.ukeducationnews.co.uk

Last point, just in case you are interested, the blog with 170,000 readers a month is at www.blog.emiratesstadium.info 

But be warned, it has nothing to do with teaching and learning, and is written for a very different audience from that which you may wish to reach.