In this month’s Executive Soapbox, Ben Gibbs, puts forward the case for companies to strategically position themselves in an increasingly dynamic education market.

Contrary to market logic, periods of sustained economic uncertainty should be viewed by the most successful companies in any sector as opportunities for growth. Take the technology sector, for example.  Many of the most innovative technology businesses around today are survivors of past recessions, their present CEOs having cut their teeth and earned their stripes in tricky times. In response to the current recession, and mindful of the subsequent period of uncertainty, many of these leading companies - especially around where I live in Cambridge - have actually increased their exposure to risk over the past 18 months, investing more, not less, in new product development. The strategy? To gain market share while the going, for them at least, is good.

It is widely accepted now that the UK’s public services industry faces a prolonged period of similar uncertainty.  And to my mind, while the market dynamics will always be fundamentally different to those in the competitively unrestricted environments described above, public service providers, particularly the private and third-sector organisations providing education services, will have many of those same opportunities for growth.

Of course, one of the reasons for the uncertainty is that we are about to go to the polls in a general election being fought largely on who can best maintain public services in the face of massive public debt.  The value of the fundamental part outsourcing plays in the provision of a quality education is recognised by all the main parties, but there are marked differences between their proposed approaches to making their £10bn or more spend more efficient.

Whatever colour we end up after the election, we can be sure that there will be less money to play for. And what that means is that private and third sector providers will have to compete harder for every deal, whether Tribal’s Jonathan Garnett gets his “level playing field” (Executive Soapbox, August 2009), or still finds himself facing tampered-with balls on the slippery, rather unpredictable wicket he’s had to master thus far.

But there’s more to it than that. Underneath these political and economic factors, there’s been a slow and largely unacknowledged change in the way the public and education profession view and wish to engage with the education services industry. When combined with both the ‘consumer-empowerment’ policies of all parties and more ‘competitive neutrality’ in the bidding process, this will mean that the providers suddenly find themselves much more accountable to the end users of their services rather than just the commissioning body.

If the thought of all that limelight is making you sweat, it should.  Because consumers of your education services cannot be dealt with in the same way as consumers of other more prosaic things like baked beans or motorways.  Education is, after all, a right rather than a privilege, a right people expect as part of their ‘social contract’ with the state.  Communicating the benefits of your services to your end users therefore takes a particularly sophisticated mode of public relations practice based on an understanding of the emotionally charged interface between you and your public.  First and foremost, you’ll need to demonstrate that you can be trusted.  You will need to prove this by showing you understand your consumers’ needs and that you have their best interests at heart.  Your profitability, chairman’s CV, diverse risk portfolio and ability to save money just won’t cut it I’m afraid.

After that, you will need to prove you can do better than the body you have, in your users’ eyes, replaced.  On the face of it, looking at some of our NDPBs and LAs, that’s not going to be too difficult, but most of them are local.  You’re unlikely to be, and that’ll be important to many of your new stakeholders.  How will you relate to these teachers, parents and students in ways that are both convincing and meaningful, coherent and reassuring?

The key to this is firstly to recognise the public value of the work you’ve already done, and then to seek to build a public profile based on that work.  Looking at this as an informed outsider, it is quite clear that, unbeknownst to most laypeople, vast tracts of our public education infrastructure have been designed, developed, maintained and radically improved by a relatively small number of commercially-minded companies. And it works. Very well.  Indeed, the case studies now being developed by Partnerships for Schools (see www.partnershipsforschools.org.uk/library/casestudies.jsp) demonstrate just how well. 

But as ever, there is more that could be done.  Yes, you have - and will continue to have - a pivotal role in assuring the quality of the UK’s education system, but what else could (should) you be contributing to the public good?  An audit we carried out recently for an education services provider suggested that, while the value of your input is greatly appreciated by the DCSF, NDPBs and LAs, they do feel that you are focused too exclusively on revenues rather than on engaging more fully in what we might call the ‘spirit’ of the education sector.  The implication is that, in return for more competitive neutrality, they might begin to look more positively on bids from profit-making providers that offered a bundle of value-added benefits like research insights, ideas sharing, engagement with schools, or free events and curriculum material for education professionals.

Of course, all of this would be highly beneficial to your reputation amongst the users of your services as well as the buyers.  But you need to start to plan strategically how to develop and manage that reputation now, so that you are well positioned to compete effectively for new business and grow your market share in an increasingly dynamic market.

Ben Gibbs is an Associate with Communications Management – a strategic communications consultancy with specialisms in education, health, enterprise, workplace and regeneration.  He can be contacted at: ben@communicationsmanagement.co.uk