The Education UK Partnership and PMI2 have carried out a strategic review of communications, commissioning an external consultant to analyse all of the current communications delivery from the Partnership, PMI2 and other British Council education programmes. Using targeted quantitative surveys and in-depth stakeholder interviews to collect data across sectors, we were able to undertake an extensive audit of all our communication vehicles and platforms with a view to improving the quality, consistency and effectiveness of the ways in which we engage with our UK partners and overseas colleagues.

The final report is now available:
Strategic review of communications (156KB) - published January 2010

The main recommendations from this research are that the British Council needs to:

			create a bespoke approach to external communication to appeal to each of the distinct customer / stakeholder segments
			consolidate communication to be delivered through one or two vehicles
			consolidate and de-duplicate common content across sectors, markets and regions and programmes
			improve the current contacts database and experiment with different content, formats and channels, ensuring a response mechanism is in place to track effectiveness.

Focus group meeting
In order to progress the findings from this work, we will be holding a focus group meeting on 4 March 2010. We would like to invite colleagues that have a communications remit from across all sectors to express their interest in participating in this initiative. The purpose of the meeting will be to identify and validate the key recommendations, discuss best practice and look for innovative new methods of communicating.

If you are interested in being involved, then please contact Miriam Brown by 19 February 2010.