On Wednesday 5th July 2023, Nick File and Trevor Goakes (Executive Headteachers at OWN Trust) met with Fiona Schneider (Marketing and Communications Officer, OWN Trust) to discuss the results of the cross-schools parent survey on communications and other matters.

The Communications and Marketing Group was set up this year to develop a shared and agreed understanding of expectations regarding website management and content (including compliance) and other public-facing platforms that raise awareness (including social media, newsletter, publicity, and communications).  

We began the meeting by looking at how marketing and communications' tasks, particularly involving the website, can be delegated and implemented next year. Fiona will be involved in offering or organising training where needed.

We were grateful for all the responses that we received from parents for the recent survey on communications. The feedback will help inform parent-school communications going forward in the form of Communications Guidelines bespoke to each school.

There was overall satisfaction with how the OWN Trust Schools communicate with parents and lots of positive comments. There were some areas to work on, which we hope will further improve the variety and effectiveness of the communication channels offered.

We will be looking at communications across the whole of the Trust over the summer to share good practice and establish a plan for how we can address the areas for improvement. This will take the form of Marketing and Communications Guidelines for schools within the Trust which will be finalised in the autumn term.

We also discussed the integration of Twitter feed updates on the school websites, standardising the results pages, and had an overview of our recent meeting with E4 Education, our website providers.

The next meeting will take place on Wednesday 27th September 2023.