The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Financial Education for Young People published their report yesterday on Financial Education and the Curriculum. We have digested and summarised it, and added some of our own insights into what challenges, changes and opportunities might now exist for businesses that work with education. Please click here to read our report.

We are very excited to announce that our campaign for Arla has been awarded the ESA Business to Consumer low budget award at this week’s Future Sponsorship conference in Amsterdam. 

The campaign – Kids Closer to Nature – aims to encourage children of all backgrounds and from all over the UK to experience the great outdoors. National Schools Partnership has worked with the Arla team and Tonic Life Communications, to encourage children to get out and about, learning about wildlife… Read more

National Schools Partnership hosted its autumn ‘Business & Education’ event last month – an idea-sharing and networking lunch with the purpose of creating an open discussion forum for CSR, CR and community engagement professionals from the commercial and corporate world, as well as community & education teams from charities, alongside experts from the education sector.

Organisations in attendance included Network Rail, BAA, Credit Suisse, RBS, JP Morgan, BP, John Laing, Shelter, The Prince’s Trust, Greenwich Education Business Partnership, The Schools Network and the Department for Education. The combination of representatives… Read more

We are really excited about the launch of our School of Fish campaign for Marks & Spencer, which has gone live this week. It is an educational programme for children between the age of 7 and 11 and their families, and will inspire pupils to learn about fish, track their journey from the sea to their plate, learn how to help protect fish, whilst discovering new, healthy, tasty fish species.

Take a look at www.school-of-fish.co.uk for:

• Fish Camp films of schoolchildren having adventures along the… Read more

We were very pleased to hear last week that our work for Arla foods has been shortlisted in the ESA Sponsorship Awards 2011!

The ‘Kids Closer to Nature’ campaign is up for the Business to Consumer (low budget) award. The work has involved Arla sponsoring a programme that brings British children closer to nature through community, school and play-based activities.

The winners are announced at the Future Sponsorship conference on 22nd November – fingers crossed!

Spurred on by the knowledge that our chief exec Mark had taken part in the HSBC Triathlon Sprint at Dorney Lake at Eton a couple of years ago, Rachel, from our schools relationship management team, and commercial director Angus set about trying to create a new National Schools Partnership record at the 2011 event.

After spending what would usually have been a peaceful Sunday undertaking a 750m swim, 20km bike ride and 5km run, they both still made it to the office the next day unscathed. Rachel completed the… Read more

Account Assistant Elysia gives us her take on what it’s like to work here…

“I started at NSP in August 2010, as an intern.  I found the internship through Graduate Talent Pool, and was taken on following a three-stage interview. I had done a short spell of work experience with the BBC marketing department, so NSP offered a great opportunity to extend that.

My first focus was on our Disney Oso Special Missions campaign – writing the copy to get teachers involved, working on timing plans and compiling discussion guides… Read more

July brought us the NSP company conference, plus the much-anticipated office away day.  The conference gave us the chance to update eachother on recent campaigns and share ideas for the coming months.  Then a delicious dinner and overnight stay at the Nutfield Priory Hotel & Spa gave everyone – old hands and a few very recent recruits – a chance to bond.

But what everyone was really waiting for was the following day – with it being July we were feeling optimistic about the chances of sunshine.  Instead, we got… Read more

During June, we conducted a survey of 102 secondary school teachers to gauge their opinions and  observations of teenage body image. We asked them for their thoughts on a range of issues which effect young people as they grow up, from physical and psychological changes, concerns about their appearance and what role social media plays in providing  reliable information about puberty. The results revealed that 71% of teachers felt that the young people they taught are more concerned with their appearance compared to 5 years ago, and 99%  of teachers… Read more

We’ve teamed up with Marks & Spencer and the charity Butterfly Conservation to launch The Butterfly Effect project in schools.  As part of the Big Butterfly Count from 16-31 July, the project encourages children, parents and teachers to take part in the nationwide survey to help discover butterfly numbers in Britain.

Sir David Attenborough, President of the Butterfly Conservation, said “Butterfly numbers are falling (and) Butterfly Conservation scientists have demonstrated that these declines can be reversed.  And when you change the environment to help butterflies thrive, all sorts of… Read more

As the New Year rolled in, it quickly became clear that we were going to need more hands on deck here at NSP.

Our Account Teams can now breathe a collective sigh of relief as Zach Varnava (Marketing Intern), Kavesh Subapanditha, Aphra Forester-Prescott (Account Assistants) and Emma Cashmore (Account Manager) have since joined the company and have quickly become integrated into the NSP team.

Anna Brocklehurst and Linsay Saunders both went on maternity leave recently, with their roles being well looked after by Ra Goel and Rachel O’Riordan respectively.  Congratulations… Read more

On Tuesday 5th April we held our third annual event, the Community & Education Engagement Forum at the Soho Hotel in London.  The focus of the event was to provide a platform for people to learn how to develop effective projects delivering community and learning engagement. The morning went really well with some very strong presentations from the speakers.

To view the speaker presentations, please click on links below:

Sonia Bruce, Schools Project Manager, BskyB A Case Study in Successful Community Engagement

Declan Swan, Chief Executive, Institute for… Read more

Aphra joined us in 2010 after graduating from Birmingham University.  During her gap year, Aphra gained work experience in a variety of offices and trained to become a TEFL teacher.  This inspired Aphra to look at working in an environment where education and marketing worked together and lead to her joining us here at National Schools Partnership in August.

Outside of work, Aphra likes going to gigs, the theatre and good restaurants.  Her favourite teacher at school was Mrs Campbell who encouraged her love of English.

National Schools Partnership is holding the annual Community & Education Engagement Forum on Tuesday 5^th April at the Soho Hotel, London.

The focus of our event is to provide a platform for people to discuss and learn how to develop effective projects delivering community and learning engagement.  Businesses, trade bodies and the public sector can see how social programmes, run in partnership with education, can deliver positive results for everyone involved.

We’re all well aware of how important our community and social marketing programmes are in today’s environment.  At this… Read more

Thirteen year old, Emily Brooker, from Marshland High School in Wisbech, has won our nationwide competition to design a poster for the high street retailer, GAME.

The competition, which attracted over 1,200 entries, was part of our campaign GAME Design Challenge, in which 500 secondary schools from around the country took part.  As well as the competition, the campaign also comprised of downloadable and online lesson plans and activity plans for teachers to use in class which were directly linked to the curriculum for ICT, Media Studies and English.

As… Read more

The shortlist for the prestigious Hollis Sponsorship Awards 2011 has just been announced and we’re really pleased to have campaigns shortlisted in three categories.

The “Wrap, Splat, Hat!” programme we created for Garnier Ambre Solaire  is now in it’s fifth year, and has been shortlisted in both the Education and Continuity categories.

Carefree’s sponsorship of the “Free to be Me” campaign has also been shortlisted in the Best Low Budget category.

We’ve been working with Garnier and Johnson & Johnson for several years on both… Read more

January 2011

We’ve recently been working with Arla on their Closer to Nature campaign in schools and last week helped organise school visits for wild life expert, Chris Packham.

Chris was invited into three primary schools and gave assemblies encouraging children to leave their consoles behind, get outside and have fun with nature.  He then went into classrooms and got involved in helping the kids build bird feeders.  The campaign, which is targeted at 7-11 year olds, has been designed to get children and their families interested in nature and… Read more

December 2010

When we heard that Macaulay primary school in Clapham were in desperate need of a Santa for their Christmas fair, we knew we had the perfect candidate for the job.

Our Senior Account Manager, Leigh Williamson was more than happy to fill the role saying, “I’ve always wanted to play Santa!”.  Leigh really got into character and had a great afternoon at the school.  Headteacher Liz Divall said, “Leigh was absolutely fantastic – he was here all afternoon and saw almost 100 children.  He was so patient with… Read more

We are really pleased to welcome three new members of staff to the team this month.

Elizabeth Gordon will be our new Business Development Manager, and Anna Brocklehurst and Su McLaughlin have both joined us as Account Directors.  Su will be looking after Jo Robben’s accounts whilst she is on maternity leave.

Now in its third year, our Lego Technic Challenge has proved as popular as ever.  The competition was part of a campaign we ran in schools for Lego and encouraged children to use their imagination to create wild and wonderful Lego constructions.

As well as downloadable classroom resources for Design & Technology lessons, we also provided the children with fun Lego activities which they could do online and offline at school and home.  Over 1,500 schools signed up for the resources and we had a huge response to the Lego… Read more

National Schools Partnership has recently joined the Institute for Education Business Excellence.  This organisation provides important links between the worlds of business and education to offer young people a rewarding and realistic introduction to the world of work

Our Chief Executive, Mark Fawcett, said, “Our experiences of working closely with schools and colleges over the years have shown us how important strong links between businesses and education can be. We enjoy helping companies create a positive impact by passing on their professional knowledge, skills and expertise to young people.  Given… Read more

October 2010

We feel we do a pretty good job on all our campaigns but obviously, we’re biased so it’s always nice to get recognition for our work from others!

The shortlist for the ESA Sponsorship Awards has just been announced and we’re really chuffed to have been nominated for not just one of our campaigns, but two.

In the Business to Consumer (low budget) category we have been shortlisted for our work on Carefree’s “Free to be me” programme and Garnier Ambre Solaire’s sun awareness campaign “Wrap, Splat, Hat!”. … Read more

October 2010

Our Back to School campaign this year included an online game which challenged everyone’s brain cells.  We created the brain training game for people to play and then pass on to their friends and colleagues to try and beat each others scores.  Nothing wrong with a bit of healthy competition especially if it’s good for the brain, but our winner, Sammy Sidhu, certainly took the game pretty seriously!

Sammy, who works for Thomas Vale Construction, had an ongoing battle with Aimee, her colleague from Thomas Vale, to see… Read more

At National Schools Partnership we are really happy to be supporting the ‘Visit our Schools and Colleges’ programme this October.  This is a great idea – encouraging relationships and understanding between schools and businesses and public sector organizations.  It is also an area that through our work over the last 6 years, we have already done a great deal to support.

See more details about the event below and click on the link if you want to take part. The deadline to register is Wednesday 13^th October.

… Read more

September 2010

We’re really pleased to announce that Jess Kingsford and Leigh Williamson have recently been promoted to Senior Account Managers.

They have both been at National Schools Partnership for around two years and have contributed enormously to the success and creativity of the company during that time.  Well done to them both!

Last week the team here took to the skies, or trees to be more precise, and spent a fun filled morning swinging, climbing and crawling through trees at ‘Go Ape’ in Farnham as part of our company away day.

Whilst for some this was simply an exhilarating experience, for others it was a case of overcoming a fear of heights with screams that would send shivers down anyone’s spine! Having said that, we can be proud that we all had a go and reckon the best moments were zip wiring… Read more

The Winner is Seb Bell, Hill & Knowlton

4th August

Our recent competition to promote the new National Schools Partnership website proved to be rather popular!

I’m sure everyone was blown away by our extensive range of services and how fantastic our website is but have to admit that the incentive to win an iPad probably enticed more than a few people to enter!

Having said that, we did get some great feedback from entrants about how well the campaign worked at promoting what we do, in a fun… Read more

Our fabulous girls, Tamsin Kon and Anna Mackay, took part in the Marketing Industry Triathlon in Windsor earlier this month.

Despite a lot of pre race speculation about the weather, the bikes and most importantly, the wetsuits, the girls both did absolutely brilliantly and had a really great time, raising £1,250 for the charity, Contact a Family.

Tamsin took part in the Super Sprint triathlon (450m swim, 10K bike, 2.5k run) and completed it in 54 minutes.

Anna did the Sprint triathlon (750m swim, 20K bike, 5k run) which took… Read more

8th July 2010

If you’re on this page, you’ve no doubt noticed our terrific new website which we’re really chuffed with.  As part of the launch of the site, we’ve decided to take this opportunity to promote the wide range of services we offer via a great online competition. And show that we’re not just about marketing through schools.

Based on the National Schools Partnership’s 7 key services, namely Schools Partnership Marketing, Consultancy, Research, Live, Digital, Education Content and School Relationship Management, the competition has been specifically designed to be… Read more

We’ve got several campaigns running in schools at the moment and none is more relevant in this sunny spell we’re having than the Wrap! Splat! Hat! programme.

Originally created by National Schools Partnership, the Garnier suncare campaign has now become a huge nationwide campaign encompassing extensive TV, radio and press advertising in, amongst others, The Sunday Times Style magazine, Hello!, The Daily Mirror, Best and Take 5 magazines.

And all from the small acorn of our idea to Wrap! Splat! Hat! back in 2007 when we engaged 2000 schools in… Read more

Jess has always had an interest in the education sector having worked for three years at IBM Summer kids camps, worked in Schools in Sri Lanka and comes from a teaching background with both her mother and sister being primary school teachers.

Before joining National Schools Partnership, Jess worked for five years in marketing both in-house and for the agency, Ogilvy, working on the largest direct marketing account, BT. For the last two and a half years Jess has overseen successful campaigns for a wide variety of clients including innocent… Read more

14 Jun 2010

We’ve been running the campaign La Vita e Bella with Zanussi in schools since April this year and have had some fabulous feedback.

The campaign engages over 300,000 pupils aged 7-11 and their families through creative and colourful educational resources.  The whole programme is based around Enzo the Chef who helps the children learn about the history and ingredients of italian food and how to cook the food at home for their families to recreate the italian mealtime experience. This seems to be working judging on the… Read more

20 May 2010

We are pleased to announce that National Schools Partnership have won Marketing Services Provider of the Year at the annual Marketing Week Engage Awards.

The awards were handed out at a ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Tuesday night amidst crowds of marketing professionals.  In the category of Marketing Services Provider, the elite band of judges were really impressed by the “innovative thinking” the National Schools Partnership showed when working on initiatives with brands.

As an agency specialising in reaching and engaging the youth and… Read more

30 Apr 2010

On Thursday 29th April, National Schools Partnership and Soprano Digital hosted its annual Youth & Family Market Seminar at The Soho Hotel.

With 100 attendees from brands, government and charities, this confirmed to us that the need for sensitive and effective marketing in the youth and family market is now more important than ever.

This year’s conference programme was designed to provide vital insight into engaging with young people and their parents, looking at how to reach the youth market in a positive and responsible way whilst… Read more