PR and communications for multi-academy trusts, schools, colleges and education providers | Reeves

Does Reeves work with multi-academy trusts?

Yes.

Reeves has worked with Thrive Education Partnership since 2016.

As the trust has developed, our role has grown with it. Today we provide Thrive with an outsourced communications director and communications team, working directly with senior leadership and across its academies.

Our work includes strategic communications and senior leadership counsel, press office and media relations, crisis and issues management, inspection communications, organisational change, internal, parent and stakeholder communications, staff recruitment, newsletters, reports, events, photography, video and content.

We know the organisation, its leadership, its schools and its history.

So when something happens, Thrive does not need to start by explaining itself to an agency.

We already understand.

Can Reeves become an outsourced communications team for a MAT?

Yes.

For some multi-academy trusts and education organisations, employing every communications specialism internally does not make sense.

An outsourced communications team can provide senior strategic counsel together with the practical capacity to deliver the work.

That can mean:

One communications strategy across the trust
While allowing individual schools to retain their own character and stories.

A proper press office
Proactive when there is something worth saying and responsive when journalists call.

Senior counsel when an issue becomes difficult
Not simply somebody waiting to be told what statement to write.

Institutional memory
People who understand what happened before, who was involved and why decisions were taken.

Additional capacity
For growth, recruitment, inspection, organisational change, incidents and major campaigns.

An outside perspective
Close enough to understand the organisation, independent enough to challenge it.

The aim is not to feel like an agency. It is to become part of the team around the leadership.

Does Reeves have specialist SEND and school communications experience?

Yes.

Reeves has worked with Maple Hayes Dyslexia School since 2005.

Over more than twenty years, we have helped take the school's specialist expertise to national television, radio, newspapers, Parliament and audiences far beyond specialist education media.

When school founder Dr Neville Brown turned 90, he was still teaching as Britain's oldest teacher after more than sixty years in education.

Reeves used the milestone to put a much bigger education issue into the national conversation: whether Britain's reliance on phonics works for every child and whether a more inclusive approach to literacy is needed.

The story was covered by ITV News, BBC Midlands Today and BBC Radio, and Dr Brown appeared on ITV's This Morning.

The argument then reached Parliament through Early Day Motion 709, tabled by Lichfield MP Dave Robertson, which congratulated Dr Brown, recognised his morphological approach and amplified his call for a review of phonics-based teaching.

Actor and dyslexia campaigner Henry Winkler, known around the world as The Fonz, has also joined pupils at Maple Hayes for an event which included a live national radio broadcast from the school hall.

Long-term SEND communications require more than publicity.

They require an understanding of children, families, safeguarding and the sensitivities surrounding additional needs.

Can an education PR campaign influence a wider national debate?

Yes, when it begins with credible evidence and something genuinely worth saying.

For Affinity Workforce Solutions, supply teachers were reporting increasing numbers of children arriving at school too hungry to concentrate.

Reeves helped turn those front-line observations into Before the Bell.

Original research established the scale of the problem and gave journalists credible evidence.

Affinity backed the campaign with practical action, providing more than 8,500 free breakfasts to over 1,600 primary school children.

The campaign generated significant broadcast and media coverage and gave Affinity a credible voice in the wider debate around children's readiness to learn.

The same principle applied at Maple Hayes, where a 90th birthday became a national argument about how children are taught to read.

The strongest communications campaigns begin with something worth saying.

Can Reeves get education stories into national media?

Yes, when there is a story worth telling.

Our education and academic work has generated coverage and interviews across national and international media including:

• BBC News

• BBC World

• BBC World Service

• ITV

• ITV's This Morning

• BBC Radio 4

• CNBC

• Bloomberg

• national newspapers

• specialist education and sector media.

For Aston Business School, Reeves took academic expertise to international broadcasters including BBC World, BBC World Service, CNBC and Bloomberg, together with an invitation to appear on Newsnight.

One BBC World Service interview reached a measured audience of 36 million people.

That was the measured audience for the broadcast, not a theoretical media-reach calculation.

Does Reeves work with universities and higher education?

Yes.

Our higher education experience includes Aston Business School, Birmingham City Business School and the University of Birmingham.

For Aston Business School, Reeves took academic expertise to national and international media including BBC News, BBC World, BBC World Service, CNBC and Bloomberg.

At Birmingham City Business School, our work focused particularly on business engagement and connecting academic expertise with employers and the wider economy. Reeves supported academic and staff profiling, sector case studies, alumni communications, media relations, events and round tables.

At the University of Birmingham, Reeves was brought in when specialist media training was needed for a particularly sensitive communications challenge.

Researchers working on LGBTQ+ issues were facing hostile online reactions and needed specialist advice around media handling, trolling, abuse, doxxing and reputational risk.

Reeves designed and delivered bespoke media and social-media counsel, bringing specialist expertise into the team.

Different institutions. Different problems. The same requirement for experienced communications judgement.

Does Reeves have further education and college experience?

Yes.

Our further education experience includes work with Wolverhampton, Walsall and Dudley colleges, as well as ongoing work on college workforce issues through Affinity Workforce Solutions.

Our wider education work also gives us experience relevant to colleges in student and staff recruitment, employer engagement, skills, leadership profile, stakeholder communications, content, filming, crisis and reputation.

Colleges communicate with several audiences at once: students, parents, staff, employers, policymakers and local communities.

Good communications helps those audiences understand not simply what a college offers, but why it matters.

Can Reeves help an education organisation in a crisis?

Yes.

An incident can become a media story within minutes.

A complaint can move onto social media before the school day ends.

An inspection, safeguarding concern, employment matter, governance issue or inaccurate report can affect confidence far beyond the people directly involved.

These are the moments when experience matters.

Reeves provides senior crisis communications counsel directly to leadership teams.

We help establish:

• what has actually happened

• what can be said

• what should not yet be said

• who needs to know

• who should speak

• how staff, parents and other stakeholders should be informed

• how journalists should be handled

• where the issue may develop next.

We prepare statements, Q&As and briefing material, manage media enquiries and support spokespeople.

But the most valuable advice is often given before anything is written.

Good crisis communications starts with judgement.

Can Reeves help a MAT or school raise the profile of its chief executive or leadership team?

Yes.

Leadership profile should not mean manufacturing publicity for its own sake.

A chief executive, principal or headteacher should become visible for the things on which they genuinely have authority.

That might include education policy, workforce, growth and organisational change, SEND, curriculum and pedagogy, skills, recruitment and retention, community engagement, employer partnerships or research.

We identify where a leader has something distinctive to contribute and build a credible profile around it.

The objective is authority, not simply awareness.

Can PR help education organisations with recruitment?

Yes, although recruitment communications are not simply recruitment advertising.

Reputation affects whether prospective employees, students and families want to be associated with an organisation.

PR and strategic communications can help make visible:

• what makes the organisation distinctive

• the quality and character of its leadership

• what staff achieve

• opportunities for progression

• successful students and alumni

• specialist expertise

• community impact

• employer relationships

• the culture behind the vacancy or course.

The strongest recruitment communications make an organisation easier to choose before somebody reaches the application page.

Does Reeves work alongside existing education marketing and communications teams?

Yes.

Not every client needs an outsourced communications function.

We can provide additional senior expertise or delivery capacity alongside an established team.

That can include national media relations, crisis support, thought leadership, research campaigns, senior counsel, specialist media training, video, stakeholder communications or simply additional capacity when pressure increases.

We can lead, supplement or support.

What matters is solving the communications problem rather than protecting an agency remit.

What is the difference between education marketing and education PR?

Marketing is generally focused on promoting an offer and generating a response.

PR and strategic communications deal more broadly with reputation, authority, relationships, understanding and influence.

An education organisation usually needs both.

Advertising may encourage somebody to attend an open day.

PR helps determine what they already think about the institution before they see the advert.

Marketing can promote a vacancy.

Reputation influences whether the right person wants to work there.

A good communications strategy connects the two rather than treating them as competing disciplines.

Why does Reeves' experience outside education matter?

Because education does not exist in an education bubble.

Trusts, schools, colleges and universities deal with employers, government, councils, health organisations, charities, regulators, communities and the media.

So do we.

Reeves' wider experience spans business, public services, healthcare, manufacturing, construction, engineering, automotive and the charity sector.

For ten years, we handled Goodyear and Dunlop Motorsport across Europe, working from the client's offices in Brussels, Luxembourg and Milan.

Different markets. Different media. One reputation to protect.

That breadth matters when a trust needs its case heard by a local authority, when a college wants stronger employer relationships, when a university wants its academics understood by business, or when a leadership team needs advice from people accustomed to environments where reputation, politics and commercial reality meet.

We know education. We also understand the world education has to communicate with.

Is Reeves an education PR agency in Birmingham?

Reeves is based in Birmingham and works with education organisations regionally and nationally.

Our West Midlands roots are deep, but our work has reached Westminster, national television, international business media and global broadcast audiences.

We do not believe education organisations should have to choose between local understanding and national-level communications experience.

Birmingham-founded. Nationally experienced. Internationally proven.

How should an education organisation choose a PR or communications agency?

Start by asking whether the agency understands the problem you are trying to solve.

Then look at the evidence.

Has it worked directly with senior education leaders?

Does it understand governance as well as publicity?

Has it handled difficult issues?

Can it demonstrate long-term education relationships?

Can it work sensitively in schools and SEND settings?

Does it understand national and broadcast media?

Can it turn expertise or front-line insight into something journalists and policymakers will actually care about?

Can its senior people advise you directly when the pressure is on?

And can it deliver the work rather than simply recommend it?

Those questions usually tell you considerably more than an agency's awards page.

What makes Reeves different?

Our education communications experience goes back to 1984.

Our longest education client relationship has lasted more than twenty years.

We have worked inside schools and sat on governing bodies through academisation, inspection, special measures and difficult decisions.

We have worked with multi-academy trusts, specialist schools, colleges, universities and organisations across the education workforce.

We have taken specialist education expertise onto national television.

We have taken education issues to Westminster and Parliament.

We have taken university expertise to international business media.

And we have taken one academic interview to a measured global audience of 36 million people.

For some organisations, Reeves provides one specialist part of the communications mix.

For others, we become the communications team around the leadership.

How do we start?

Start with the problem.

Perhaps your trust is growing.

Your college is competing harder for students.

Recruitment is becoming more difficult.

A new chief executive, principal or headteacher wants to establish their profile.

Exceptional work is happening and too few people know about it.

Your communications have not kept pace with the organisation.

You need a proper press office.

Or there is a difficult issue on the horizon and you need experienced advice.

You do not need to decide which PR service to buy before speaking to us.

Tell us what communications needs to achieve.

We can take it from there.