CASE STUDY

NCFE

How PLMR helped NCFE build the profile of their educational charity and awarding body.

Client

NCFE

Sector

Services provided

The Situation

We work closely with the awarding body NCFE, who advocate for technical education and vocational routes into work. Their overall communications objective has been to raise brand awareness with political stakeholders and learners, to promote their qualifications, and the importance of a strong FE offer in every community.

What we did

We created key messaging which reflected NCFE’s broad range of expertise in further and technical education, while ensuring their sector specialisms, including Early Years, Digital and Social Care, remained a key focus throughout our outreach.

Using this messaging, we undertook stakeholder engagement to share invaluable insights with influencers and key decision-maker. Alongside this stakeholder engagement, we also began to develop strong media angles, while navigated a challenging media landscape which was reticent to cover stories focused on further and technical education.

The Result

Through this targeted stakeholder engagement plan, NCFE secured meetings with key influencers within the FE space, including having a meeting with the Minister for Skills. We established lasting relationships with influential backbench MPs, and leveraged their support to influence parliamentary activity, through PQs and other official business.

A particularly key marker of success which NCFE identified was to have the opportunity to give oral evidence at an Education Select Committee session, on an inquiry of relevance to NCFE’s work. As a result of our engagement, we secured NCFE the chance to give oral evidence to the Education Select Committee twice in 2022, as part of the Future of Post-16 Qualifications and the Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance inquiries.

Alongside these positive outcomes in stakeholder engagement, we also grew brand recognition through national media coverage including TV packages across various news channels including on Sky News, radio appearances on LBC and Times Radio and a variety of print media at national and trade level.

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