Our network has more than 4.5 million children in their care and is strongly represented in hard-to-reach areas.
We develop and run major education and engagement programmes through this wide network of schools, creating an army of young community influencers, to drive behavioural change.
Once children are educated, they become very effective ambassadors to spread important messages to their family and local community.
This means we can amplify communication messages to millions of school children and their families across the UK.
A good example was our recent work with Census 2021. Following our research with schools, we developed and ran a census education engagement programme, called Let’s Count!. This exceeded targets by 17%, with participation from 9,035 schools, 2.2 million children and 2.1 million parents.
We used a simple proposition, as a hook for the children to take home to their families and community…
“Help the NHS… Fill in the census”
This really resonated with school communities. It contributed to the most successful census collection operation for Census 2021. It also won STEM Educational Programme of the Year.
Our process is extremely powerful in areas where the first language of parents is not English – or in communities with low adult literacy and deprived areas where people are vulnerable to social media misinformation.
For Census 2021, we recruited 81.9% of schools in the most deprived areas.
Quotes from Headteachers who took part…
This was a really successful event for our school, especially as we have a large Pakistani/Bangladeshi population, many of whom were not aware of, or understood, what the census was about. This helped our local community to gain more information via the children’s knowledge.
St. Agnes CofE Primary School, Manchester.
The children loved being involved in the Let’s Count census. It’s a brilliant resource and very educational. More parents completed the census as a result of the children knowing about it.
Abercerdin Primary School, Bridgend.
It gave staff and children a vehicle to talk about and share information between themselves and their families. More of our parents had a better understanding of why we do the census as a result – and the children loved telling them they would get fined if they didn’t do ‘their homework’!. It was such an enjoyable project incorporating maths and physical activity in an accessible way. Thank you.
St. James’ CofE Primary School, Ashton Under Lyne.