Case studies

Heritage and cultural sector experience

English Heritage were reviewing their education provision at Stonehenge, perhaps the UK’s most iconic heritage site and so commissioned Schoolzone to help inform the development. There were several strands to the research:

• We contacted schools who had bookings and then visited the site to talk to leaders, accompanying adults and children
• We contacted previous visitors who had brought school trips and interviewed them via phone
• We found local community group leaders, such as Scouts, Guides, Round Table and other non-education sector representatives and invited them to take part in interviews
• We reached out to home educators via local forums to gain their feedback
• We conducted focus groups with visitors and school trip leaders from around the country and with those who had been to Stonehenge
• We also ran a survey of teachers in the UK and overseas schools to update our understanding of the broader school trips market, reaching the quota of 400 over a weekend.

Our report gave specific recommendations and more general guidance which might be more widely applicable to English Heritage’s other venues.

 

Kensington Royal Palace commissioned Schoolzone to review their schools offering in 2019 via a survey to trips organisers within 50 miles of the palace. We provided recommendations about which aspects of the offering would be most attractive to schools, when to run events and what kinds of supporting resources would be most important, as well as suggesting how curriculum coverage might be leveraged to provide more incentive to schools to attend.

 

West Midlands Museum Development Trust represent 10 museums. They commissioned Schoolzone to survey local schools to find out what their requirements were for local museums when taking school visits. We also reviewed all their education materials and ran a research forum with local teachers that provided a means by which representatives from all 10 museums could ask for more detailed and specific feedback on their education offerings. We provided detailed recommendations, both about general school requirements, how museums might improve their offerings and about possible collaborations that would help schools reduce the barriers to attendance.

 

UK Parliament have a unique schools offering and wanted to check its relevance to school needs as well as to evaluate the four main print resources covering Key Stages 1 – 5. Schoolzone conducted an online survey and used the data gathered to recruit for a series of online focus groups. We also placed resources with our evaluation team (seven for each key stage) and submitted separate reports with recommendations for future development for each key stage.

 

The National Army Museum undertook a complete review of their schools offering following significant investment from the Lottery Fund. Schoolzone analysed visitor numbers, website visitor data, Schoolzone’s own school trips research and third-party data sources to explore the effectiveness of marketing strategies. We then conducted a survey of users, lapsed users and non-users to establish the size and shape of the market as well as NAM’s position within it. In a third phase, fieldworkers visited the museum to talk to teachers, responsible adults, children and museum staff and observed workshops to help evaluate the visitor experience. These visits, combined with research forums allowed us to evaluate the offering itself, the supporting information and learning resources and marketing materials. A 20,000-word report gave extensive feedback and recommendations.