The term “word gap” is typically used to refer to children in Early Years settings or pupils entering primary school with a vocabulary far below age-related expectations. However, recent research undertaken by Oxford University Press confirms that the word gap can be present throughout a child’s education and beyond. We were delighted that Oxford University Press chose Oriel Square to produce the first Oxford Language Report, drawing on this research, highlighting the issue of the word gap and what successful schools have done to address it.
Oxford University Press asked Oriel Square to produce the report just before Christmas 2017, and we started the project a few weeks later. OUP had a formidable array of in-house talent lined up to contribute, with the Strategy, PR and Communications teams primed to use the report to reach multiple stakeholders: media, education leaders, government, and their customers. And we were all delighted with the result: widespread coverage in the media of this important issue in education, and engagement from education policy-makers and influencers all keen to help close the word gap. All thanks to a high-quality report published within a pretty tight time period (about 6 weeks from kick-off to completion).
If you want to get in touch to find out how we could help other BESA members to achieve similarly high-quality results, drop Sam or John a line. In terms of what we can do, there are several options:
● One immediate benefit of working with us is the short amount of time it will take us to read in to your project – because we try to stay up to date with the broad range of educational policy and research, we’ll need a bit of time to focus on your business and your story, but we’re pretty quick on the uptake.
● We know the best people in education. That means we can identify trusted specialist publishers, editors, writers, designers, researchers and contributors to form a credible team that will complement your in-house expertise and fill any gaps you have in capacity or knowledge.
● The experience of our directors in working with the senior teams of the educational publishing world means we can facilitate the meetings or approval process needed to get agreement on a position from a cross-functional group of in-house experts with different priorities. It also means we’re adept at getting anything else necessary from you to enable us to move quickly and to produce a high-quality report on a compelling issue for you.
● Our awareness of and closeness to the educational policy, research and communications worlds means we can be a good partner to your PR team as well – or if your PR team are run off their feet, we can identify the right associates to contribute there too.
Examples of media coverage for the Oxford Language Report:
