Friday 5th December 2014

Steve Eastaugh invested more time with Steve Mitchell this week, so we can begin mapping the skills journey for ALL Activity Professional’s and business owners. Find out more about Steve Mitchell below.

Premier Education Group (PEG) is delighted to announce that Steve Mitchell will be joining our team in an advisory consultant role for the Skills and Compliance department. As part of Steve’s new role, he would like to carry out a Skills audit survey across the network for all stakeholders.

The purpose of this survey is to assess your qualifications in line with aspirations and in the process highlight any gaps in the two. We can then use this information to design programmes for you in the future.

One of the many things undertaken this week by the Marketing department, was the creation of a new survey which will help you understand more about customers and competitors (specific to holiday time activity) within your territory. This valuable data will assist you in completing your Marketing Plan. (Find out more below).

Data of any kind is immensely important in any business and the more you have the better decisions you can make about the direction of your business. Whilst we know you undertake research in your territories we want to help you understand more about your customers so we’ve produced a short parent survey (specific to holiday time activity) to give you additional insight in to your customers.

If you would like us to send this survey to your database of opted in parents, please email [email protected]. We will then give you access to the results via a unique web-link which will be sent to you via SurveyMonkey.

This week Danny Melling spent a further 30 hours on your behalf researching, meeting people and analysing data as part of the 2015 holiday programme development.

Thank you for those who have met the deadline for submitting your annual accounts.

Almost 80% of the network managed to meet the deadline which is encouraging, and this has allowed us to begin analysing the data and discover some fascinating stats which in turn we will share with you to help guide you in the future.

Already we can see...

Our finance department spent this week collating and reporting your annual accounts which has enabled us to identify key trends and feedback important stats within just one week of the submission deadline.

We’re pleased to announce that Premier Sport was last week presented with the ‘Continuous Improvement Award’ at this year’s 2014 Best Franchise Awards, held at the Hilton, Milton Keynes.

This is the 3rd year Premier has entered the awards and this particular accolade is given to those franchisors which have improved their support and service to their franchisees year on year.

Karl Fox spent 10 hours this week researching grants on behalf of Golden Mile licensees.

Following his latest network meeting, franchisee Sam Kilner, who is based in Cheshire, invested in some bespoke support from our Educational Consultant, Yvonne Gandy.

Sam had recently secured a new PE contract at a school he had never worked with before but it appears he didn’t celebrate Premier Sport’s robust internal Quality Assurance (QA) practices and our Scheme of Work (SoW) as well as he might have done.

Frankie Worthington strengthened the value of the Performing Arts license by investing more time this week on the new music and dance products, which are being introduced in February.

Internally and working alongside our external partners we continually look at areas of the business we can develop and improve. The LEAN project in conjunction with Bill Vickers is a great example and the positive outcomes of this investment can be seen throughout the business.

Another good example is the work we’ve been doing with Soak one of our digital agencies to monitor and improve the performance of our websites. As well as the standard Google Analytics reporting, we recently installed SessionCam to each of the sites. This technology allows us to watch recordings of visitor interactions, including mouse movements, clicks, scrolling, heatmaps of popular places, plus design and usability performance.

75% of our top 12 performing territories (turnover), have BOTH turned over more than £200k per territory AND have franchisee owners who own AT LEAST ONE OTHER additional Premier Sport franchise. They are expanding their wealth by operating an additional franchise to maximise cost saving and growth opportunities.

The Golden Mile will be rewarding the TOP THREE most active Golden Mile schools throughout National Obesity Week (NOAW) in January (12th - 15th).

This is YOUR opportunity to maximise engagement with YOUR customers and generate some positive PR around your business.

Here are some ideas to get you started...

James Jennison is the latest in a long line of established franchisees raving about the benefits of offering both sport and dance provision to his schools in Derby.

James took time out from his duties as Franchise Mentor and running his Premier Sport, Premier Performing Arts and The Golden Mile business to answer a few questions.

Take it away James...

Newham, the London borough of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, has the highest levels of inactivity in England, according to a recent report. There is one primary school that sits at the heart of the local community already ahead of the curve in addressing this issue.

If so, then you may be unaware that you could be infringing copyright law.

As with music, if home entertainment DVD’s or downloads from the internet are shown in a school or club, then it is considered a ‘public performance’. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 states you need to get permission from the copyright holder to ‘perform’ film in public.  As you’ll have seen, this mandatory requirement is also shown as a warning before the start of a film.

We now encourage you to review your use of film and television content that you may use in schools or clubs, to ensure that you are not infringing copyright law.

TIME Associates have announced they have increased their staffing levels this Christmas period to assist the growing demand for telesales support within the network.

Have you used Time Associates? Here’s why you should...

Our very own Franchisee Mentor, James Jennison recently purchased telesales credits via our online shop. TIME managed to secure a number of meetings with new schools in his area, so we asked him how the meetings went;

The festive period is on the horizon so we thought it would be useful to give you advance notice of the shop order postage deadline.

If you require any shop orders to be delivered before Tuesday 6th January, you will need to place your order via the online shop before 1pm on Thursday 18th December, subject to stock availability.

Click to download the Policy Briefing from ukactive regarding the recent Autumn Statement from the Chancellor. There are some interesting developments for our sector within this Statement, with several positives for small and medium-sized businesses, who are recognised in the document as key drivers of the wider economy. We also await the review of Business Rates which will happen over the course of the next two years.

We thought you would find it useful to create a Weekly News Update archive housing previous newsletters from this academic year.

‘Read more’ to catch up on any news you may have missed.