CASE STUDY

Save Our Early Years

How a 12 month social media campaign saved our early years
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Client

NCFE/Cache

Sector

Education

Services provided

Digital Marketing

Email Marketing

The Situation

The Government introduced a new policy in September 2014 that meant nursery staff could only qualify as Level 3 Early Years Educators if they had GCSEs in both English and maths at grade C or above. The policy meant alternative qualifications in literacy and numeracy, such as Functional Skills, no longer counted. The changes meant nurseries were left chronically short-staffed –at a time when demand was rising.

PLMR was enlisted in March 2016 by awarding body CACHE to campaign for the policy to be scrapped. Our strategy was to:

  • Energetically campaign across digital, social and traditional platforms to build momentum
  • Build a coalition of support among parents, early years staff, nursery managers, sector leaders and opposition politicians
  • Encourage them to lobby the Education Secretary and key Ministers directly

What we did

PLMR used social media campaigning to build maximum awareness, creating a bedrock of support, enhanced by our public relations and lobbying activity.

We created a name and logo for the campaign –#SaveOurEarlyYears–and a bespoke website. Its aim was to explain a complex issue in simple, accessible terms, with a strong call to action. The social media and digital elements of the campaign were:

  • A branded and highly active Twitter account, with regular daily monitoring and management, building audiences entirely organically
  • A one-click system that sent tweets directly to the Education Secretary from the website, allowing supporters to actively help the campaign
  • A series of shareable and digestible infographics that helped make the issue easily understood by potential supporters
  • A series of short, highly shareable video clips, utilising Twitter’s video auto-play feature, showing campaign support from important voices in the early education sector
  • A one-click system that sent a pre-written email letter directly to the Education Secretary, urging her to reverse the decision, which was shared regularly on Twitter
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Impressions on social media – a testament to the number of users our campaign reached online
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Early years locations represented by the coalition of supporters our campaign put together, amassed predominately through our Twitter interactions
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Digital campaign messages sent through our website to the Education Secretary, calling for the policy to be scrapped

The Result

In March 2017, after a year of our campaigning, and two-and-a-half years after the policy was introduced, Childcare Minister, Caroline Dinenage’s officials informed us that the GCSE-only policy would be scrapped and Functional Skills would be reinstated from 1stApril.

As one nursery manager told us: “Without your drive we would still be in this boat. We are elated, one member of staff cried because it means so much to her. So THANK YOU.”

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PLMR’s crisis communications experience is second to none, and includes pre-emptive and reactive work across traditional and social media channels. We work with a range of organisations to offer critical communication support when they are faced with difficult and challenging scenarios.