News Corp Australia has unveiled the first stage of a major editorial and marketing campaign exploring the state of the nation’s education system – Schools Hub – addressing what the publisher has identified as the challenges facing classrooms and how to best support teachers.
The first of the three-part series is Schools Hub which will detail NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) performance of schools over the past five years backed by news and analysis from News Corp Australia’s education reporters.
Ben English
“Each News Corp daily metro will be doing a deep dive into their own markets,” Daily Telegraph editor Ben English told Mediaweek.
English noted Schools Hub enables parents to more readily make better-informed decisions. “Let’s face it, the education system, and I would argue by design, is decidedly opaque. Since NAPLAN was introduced a decade ago education unions around the country have done their utmost to prevent any meaningful relative analysis to be done.
“Parents want to know how is their school going relative to other schools.”
English added though that he understands some of the criticisms about making school comparisons and the sensitivities associated with ranking teacher performance.
“It’s important that nobody feels embarrassed or ashamed by the journalism that we’re doing.
“Schools Hub is about us trying to inform, advocate and inspire. We want to inform people through the data. We want to advocate for the best possible school education system in order to realise the learning potential of our kids. We also want to inspire better decision making, not just by parents, but by governments.”
Louise Roberts
News Corp Australia’s national editor 360 Commercial Louise Roberts added: “We’ve always pitched Schools Hub [which first launched in 2019] as the ultimate guide for parents. As Ben said, to compare the performance of their schools against other schools in the area so as to be able to make the best decision for their own child and their own families.
“The NAPLAN results are a great way to start with a five-year comparison of how schools have fared but we’ll also go into other issues. This is a four-month campaign for Schools Hub. We’ll go into best performing schools, look at the student-to-teacher ratio, and look at the issues around that to give our readers the full picture of schools’ performances.
“This is an education advocacy piece, it’s certainly not a blame game or a discussion about pinning blame on teachers. In fact, quite the opposite. We are very supportive of teachers, and we want to celebrate them and the difference they’re making.”
English added the newspaper knows from previous years how popular this educational series is with the readers. “One of the key insights we get is there remains an enormous appetite for meaningful and relevant information about education. That is why we are increasing investment across our newsrooms, we’re adding education reporters and editors, analysts, etc. We have made an enormous investment into news and we are able to analyse our data to ensure that we’re as efficient as we can be about delivering stories that people actually want to consume.”
Roberts said they also use research from their readers in addition to insights gleaned from 30 of the country’s top university vice-chancellors to see what they think. “We’ve also got an education advisory panel who are working closely with us to make sure we’re tackling the right issues.”
Schools Hub: Taking action on education
The first of the three-part series has launched with Schools Hub – a data-rich interactive tool featuring the NAPLAN performance of schools over the past five years backed.
When school returns in 2023 the campaign’s second phase steps up on February 20 with Best In Class – a national advocacy campaign offering solutions to address what can be done to reverse the decline of Australia’s children in global academic rankings.
At the same time, News Corp will launch Australia’s Best Teachers, celebrating the best, most inspiring teachers and principals and the life-changing differences they make to students every day, despite the profession facing critical shortages.
News Corp’s marketing plan for educational series
The campaign will be supported by a multi-platform, integrated marketing strategy across News Corp Australia’s digital brands, including Kidspot and Kids News, as well as print, radio, out-of-home advertising and social media.
