65%

Open rate

6000-12000

Page Views per month

Web design & internal communication

Hadlow Rural Community School

Background: Hadlow Rural Community School in Kent is the first and so far only academy school in the country to build land-based studies into the mainstream curriculum for every student aged 11 to 16. Its unique aim is to inspire young people to explore careers in or linked to the rural sector.

Brief: LGA was asked to work alongside the new headteacher and an external web designer, Greenhouse Schools, on revamping a prototype website within a limited timeframe. Our team was responsible for content management, from origination to final proof, making several suggestions to improve and enhance functionality along the way.

Having successfully launched the site in 2015, we were then asked to design a digital newsletter to help build a sense of community and communicate effectively with students, parents, staff and external stakeholders. LGA co-ordinated content with HRCS staff members, writing, formatting, issuing and tracking campaigns via Mailchimp. The aim was to establish a format that could eventually be managed internally when staffing levels permitted. LGA successfully handled five editions of the newsletter before handing over as planned.

Outcome: Traffic to the website www.hrcschool.org increased to between 6,000 and 12,000 page views a month. The digital newsletter achieved a consistently high open rate at around 65% and a click through rate of around 25% and both have become key to communicating to the school’s internal and external audiences. The quality of a school’s communication with its pupils’ parents and carers is one of the criteria used by Ofsted inspectors, which judged HRCS as a ‘Good’ school in 2016.