Championing further education with the Education and Training Foundation

Grace French
Written by Grace French

Further education (FE) and Training have been quietly thriving and evolving for years, with the variety and quality of qualifications on the rise. Its transformative impact needed to be celebrated.  

With a strong foothold in the education sector, we’ve worked with a range of organisations and charities to address inequalities and call for better opportunities and outcomes for learners of all ages.

The Levelling Up agenda put greater focus and investment on training, helping to place FE where it deserves to be. But we knew that more needed to be done to help people see its transformational potential for thousands of learners and teachers alike.

We set out to do just this with the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) and its membership body, the Society for Education and Training (SET).

Together we set out to elevate the profile of FE to get people to recognise its potential and power, empowering people to learn in a way that works for them.

To do this, we had to be bold – this was about a reimagining of the sector. Our integrated campaign was devised with three key priorities in mind:

  1. Elevating the profile of FE and training
  2. Positioning ETF and SET as the champions of the sector
  3. Clarifying the roles of ETF and SET in the sector, and the value they bring to FE professionals

Throughout, we knew we needed to bring the sector on the journey with us – listening to, and learning from, those working in FE as we developed the campaign, and raising their voices at launch and beyond.

We began with an in-depth insight phase to truly immerse ourselves in the task at hand. This included a competitor analysis, analysis of existing research, and gathering qualitative and quantitative insights from a range of FE and Training teachers, trainers and learners, to understand their motivators and barriers to engaging with ETF and SET.

We used this rich insight to draw out key themes which allowed us to explore potential creative routes, before refining our campaign name – Together we transform. This name reflected the collaborative nature of a FE professional’s career journey, showing that ETF and SET are ‘in this with you’, and tapped into the purpose of working in FE and Training that shone through in our insight phase – transforming lives and outcomes for those working and learning in the sector.

Armed with a campaign name, a narrative and key messages, we developed a multi-channel launch campaign to start the conversation. This included a case-study led video and gif series, fresh research to highlight the transformative impact of FE, powerful case studies, alongside engaging social media content and press materials to amplify the assets and encourage conversation about the power of FE.

At launch, Together we transform reached 2.2m+ people through media, and 26.9k of our target audience through organic social media. Against a backdrop of a competitive news landscape nationally and for the education sector, we managed to cut through the noise on an overlooked issue. This is just the start of the initiative and ETF and SET will continue to champion the sector, and the professionalism of all those who work within it on a wider scale. Together we transform proves that FE and Training is, without a doubt, transformative, and deserves greater recognition and respect.

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