Friday 27th November 2015

The Hare and the Tortoise mascots are an ideal way to deliver the WOW factor to your customers and enables you to interact with children on your Inspire to Engage activities. Mascots at an event will make your brand stand out from the crowd showing a fun and memorable aspect of your service.

I mean, who wouldn’t want a picture taken with a big fluffy Hare or give a high five to a sporty Tortoise?

If you don’t have the budget for a branded email campaign, then don’t worry!

We can provide a plain text email to your parent database, which includes our Core Value footer for only £30.

Franchisees have previously used this service to successfully remind parents of an upcoming activity or a special course promotion they may be running.

Our strategic lead, Yvonne Gandy will be hosting a regular Q&A GoToTraining session aimed at supporting our new franchisees (and any others that wish to join in) in their strategic approach to schools. With Yvonne’s extensive knowledge of the current school landscape, these session are a must!

Yvonne’s opening session will be Thursday 3rd December, 6pm-7pm. There will then two sessions per month starting from January 2016.

Personalised 200gm Cadbury Chocolate Bars

Delight your headteachers this Christmas with a completely personalised Cadbury chocolate bar. The bespoke template allows you to add in the names of your teachers, your social media details and a unique message. Available now on the Irongate store in both Premier Sport and Premier Performing Arts themes.

Mini Christmas Tree Chocolate Tins

Available from 7th December, these Premier Sport branded Christmas Tree Chocolate Tins are a great gift for children and teachers. Each tin contains approx. 9 - 10 chocolates. Limited stock available so purchase early to avoid missing out!

On Monday 23rd November, the dashboard went live for all partner schools. It’s now up to you and your Activity Professionals to work closely with your schools and class teachers to ensure that the data going in to the BMS is ‘clean’.

If this is used correctly, the dashboard will be an amazing impact tool for both franchisees and their schools. This will of course save Activity Professionals time as they would normally create manual impact reports and end of year pupil reports.

Not get a chance to join Yvonne’s GoToMeeting last Thursday? Not to worry, please download the session now to ensure you’re up to speed with Ofsted’s Inspection Framework.

Last month over 30 people from our 100 Club businesses attended a networking event and shared success stories to help push their business forward. Given the level of impact that business owners took from the event, it was recommended that the whole network would benefit from the same information.

With that in mind, we’re hosting this session again on Tues 8th December at the Lea Marston Hotel, from 9am – 3pm. Places are limited to two per franchise.

Premier Sport will contribute 35% towards each booking, meaning that the cost is just £30 per person.

Over the past couple of months, Operations Director Danny Melling has been working on a pilot to support new franchisees enabling them to accelerate their product and landscape knowledge, meaning they can grow their business quicker.

The pilot included new franchisee, Gareth Owen spending up to 20 days working within Danny’s business, shadowing staff and learning the ropes!

Dan Gyles one of our new starters, has already landed a chance to present at a Headteachers conference in front of... wait for it... 40 headteachers, supported by the schools councillor and local MP.

The Golden Mile Director, Karl Fox commented, “huge credit has to go to Dan as he sent communications out to ALL four of his local MP’s and only one responded; but what a potential game-changing response that could be. Even if only 50% of schools engage, it’s still a higher penetration rate than the average year 3 franchisee. In essence, Dan could have saved himself three years work... Work Smarter Not Harder!!”

George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, yesterday announced his spending and fiscal plans for the next four years and the remainder of this Parliament - putting forward his plan to achieve an overall Government budget surplus by 2020. Today’s Comprehensive Spending Review sets out the budget for every government department and the broad spending plans of Britain’s first majority Conservative Government since 1992, outlining where the spending cuts will fall to meet the Government’s plans.

‘There has traditionally been an unenforced ‘downturn’ in sales activity between mid-December and mid-January’ informs Glenn Hoy of TIME Associates.

Adding, ‘In some cases a few will even wait until the next NTE (in February) to really refocus on sales. My tip is ‘do the maths’ – from 1 December until the NTE there are potentially 10 working weeks. Given schools are closed for two of those, your sales capacity is still at 80%.

We’ve recently received a number of emails from business owners using incorrect email signatures, include logos from organisations we’re no longer affiliated with. These have included logos from AfPE, DKHLT and QiSS.

Join Finance Director, Steve Girling on Monday 14th December at 10-11am where he’ll answer your questions or queries you may have around the subject of Finance and covering subjects such as bookkeeping, cash flow, profit & loss, balance sheets, budgeting, forecasting, VAT and financial analysis.

Monday’s ‘Operations Business Development’ GoToMeeting will be discussing ‘Schools Portal Dashboard’ from 9am-10am.

If you want to add any points to the meeting agenda, please email these over to Operations Director, Danny Melling before Monday’s session.

Login details –

1. To join the meeting, go to - https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/250214829
2. Use your microphone and speakers (VoIP) - a headset is recommended.  Or, call in using your telephone.
   Dial +44 (0) 20 3713 5010
   Access Code: 250-214-829
   Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting
   Meeting ID: 250-214-829

A regular ‘Delivery’ Q&A GoToMeeting with our National Quality Development Manager, Andy Heald.

Andy Heald will take any questions / queries / guidance he receives via email to form the agenda points in these sessions. The chances are, other franchisees/Activity Professionals with benefit from your question being answered.

Hit the button below and you’ll be given the option to secure your place on the following session/s -

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.