BECTA: stakeholder engagement for the Further Education and Skills sector
Becta was a non-departmental public body responsible for improving the use of technology in the UK education sector. They had a remit to reach the full scope of the UK's education sector - excluding higher education - to provide meaningful resources and guidance on how to better adopt technology through their teaching, assessments, operations and audience engagement.
Furthermore, Becta also existed to support inspectors and assessors in understanding how to evaluate the use of technology in an organisation or on a particular programme or curriculum.
They commissioned our CEO over a period of two years to support them specifically to improve the ways in which they engaged with a variety of stakeholders across the Further Education and Skills sector. This included:
FE colleges
Work-based learning providers and assessors
Offender learning services
Military learning specialists
Private training providers
Other public organisations serving the FE and Skills sector, including government agencies, examination boards, quality assessment agencies, and many more.
Within those organisations, our work would need to reach and have an impact on:
Senior leaders and principals within education organisations
Teaching and learning professionals, especially e-learning professionals
Independent consultant technologists advising the sector
Technology vendors and suppliers, including their developers and business and sales leads
Assessors, examiners and inspectors
Ministers and their advisors
Education press and media
Other intermediaries and influencers for the above audiences.
Over the two years of working with them, some of the highlights of our work included:
Thoroughly reviewing their communications and implementing a more audience-centred approach, evaluating what was working well and what wasn't gaining traction
The development of an FE and Skills stakeholder engagement plan
Supporting individual project leads in developing communication plans for their specific projects
Overseeing the production of a Guardian special education supplement, including overseeing content production and liaison between the Guardian and content providers
Organising an industry event hosted by Google, featuring TED Prize winner Professor Sugata Mitra and other high profile speakers
Organising an event for senior ministers in partnership with the Ministry of Defence
Overseeing all publications produced by Becta for the FE and Skills sector
Development of more effective email communications and internal communications
Establishing social media accounts for the FE and Skills arm of Becta and consistently delivering impact. This included gaining direct engagement 1-2-1 with the then Minister for Further Education and Skills on Twitter, by-passing a communications route through formal channels that would typically take 6-weeks to turn around.