Hard lessons for the classroom sponsors

The battle for Allders’ chain of duty free shops pits Swissair against BAA. Many analysts question the sanity of the deal but for BAA – which holds the airport ownership ace – it could open global markets. By David Benady

Rising concern over the commercialisation of schools has fuelled new NCC guidelines for the 300m sector. By Tom O’Sullivan

The Jesuits said that if you give me the child until he is seven then I will give you the man. In the Nineties, it is brand managers and marketing directors offering a similar service to shape consumer demand into the next century.

Publication of the National Consumer Council’s guidelines on schools sponsorship (MW May 24) highlights what is now a huge marketing area. The NCC estimates that 300m is spent on marketing to schools each year but the figure is notoriously difficult to assess and would not, for instance, necessarily include the controversial 250,000 sponsorship of a London school by the tobacco manufacturer BAT Industries, announced last week.

The NCC’s research condemns cases where educational sponsorships have been “biased”, “plastered with company logos” and have encouraged children to eat chocolate and fast foods. And it questions the benefit of voucher schemes created by supermarkets Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s because of the disproportionate value of the schemes to the supermarkets rather than to the schools.

The new rules are an update of the NCC’s 1986 guidelines and were triggered by a growth in the number of food sponsors and a concern that the UK could be moving towards the situation in the US, where compulsory school films carry advertising.

“We want to protect British schools from these excesses,” says NCC chairman David Hatch. “The classroom should be a place of learning, not a free-for-all for business interests.”

The NCC praises some schemes for already meeting the new rules. But the guidelines represent the first attempt to control the growth in sponsorship and have been broadly welcomed by most involved.

However, Business in the Community, which promotes links between commerce and the community, resigned from the NCC committee which drew up the guidelines be cause it felt they were too restrictive.

“The market is now too big and too mature for blanket condemnation,” says Nick Fuller, managing director at the specialist agency Educational Communications. “The stereotypical view of companies as starting from a position of ‘How much can we get away with?’ is over. The guidelines should move the debate and help people identify good and bad practice.”

The three principal areas of activity are sponsorship of teaching materials, voucher schemes offering parents the chance to contribute to capital purchases such as com puters, and charitable donations.

Significantly, the guidelines are not just for the business end of the equation. The new rules incorporate a checklist for parents, schools, teachers and governors to assess the validity of programmes. Fuller believes this is the most important element of the new initiative.

“The more enlightened companies have a view of the whole process, including teachers, parents and schools. It is one of the really positive things about these guidelines that they are not just for business but give the school professionals a checklist too,” says Fuller.

The guidelines call on brand owners to create educational materials that are balanced and relevant to the school curriculum but which do not encourage children to pester parents or give explicit encouragement to buy branded products. They also ask those operating voucher programmes to give clear information on a scheme’s exchange rate, the minimum offer and time limit on the promotion.

“No longer is business the enemy,” says William Anderson, business director at Poise Marketing, which works with the 50-strong Schools Consortium. “Now the time has come to explain to schools why companies wish to market their products and services through the classroom. Businesses must involve practising teachers.”

As if to underline the growth in educational sponsorship, a Department of Education and Employment newsletter being sent to schools to publicise the new guidelines is itself sponsored by Barclays Bank. The guidelines are a sign that sponsorship of education – which has met with opposition in the past – is here to stay.

GUIDELINES IN BRIEF

The eight-point guidelines for sponsors establish the starting point for any scheme. All materials and activities should:

1. Be relevant to the school curriculum, contribute to the development of core skills but not encourage unsafe actions.

2. Give a balanced view of issues, acknowledge the existence of alternative views and the sponsor’s market interests.

3. Be developed in accordance with regional variations, include advice from education professionals and be tested for educational value before launch.

4. Not include explicit encouragement to buy branded products, play on children’s fears, merchandising slogans or logos other than those relevant to the sponsorship, purely promotional material or make claims of superiority over other products.

5. Reflect a multi-cultural society and avoid stereotypes.

6. Be marked clearly with the sponsor’s identity, the age groups for which they are intended, date of publication.

7. Not be distributed in an unsolicited manner. 8. Voucher and awards schemes should not encourage children to pester parents, not offer products as prizes for everyday academic performance but should include clear information on the exchange rate, nutritional value of any food and drinks products and crucially should be structured to allow as many schools as possible to participate.