Achieving an award presents a prime opportunity to celebrate excellence, distinguish the achievements of your school community and to sometimes gain recognition on a national scale. However, with a potentially time-consuming process towards the end goal, the question could often be raised: how valuable will your success be?
Awards provide credible endorsements from leading industry organisations, figures and influencers. With many options available, there is a need for careful consideration when selecting which awards to enter in order to ensure they will be worthwhile. For example, at DLD College London we focus on those which are the best known in the independent education sector and which are used as a benchmark for quality.
Award submissions offer an opportunity to evaluate all of the good practice at a school and putting together a nomination is very much a team effort. It is therefore important that the work is shared across the relevant people and departments within the school, who can prepare the base entry and supply supporting evidence.
Beforehand, it is valuable to take the time to review how the judges will be evaluating the entries and then construct your entry to meet their criteria. It is also important to understand what supporting evidence is required and to follow any rules for entry including submission deadlines, word counts and assets. Once assembled, the marketing and communications manager can then fine-tune the entry to ensure the criteria is met and that the most compelling story is submitted for the award category.
“Award submissions offer an opportunity to evaluate all of the good practice at a school.”
Particularly within the independent education sector most awards are free to enter, although there may be some costs associated with attending ceremonies and dinners, should you be shortlisted. As a school we have incurred no costs for the awards which we have entered and have been successful in, largely due to the pandemic preventing physical celebrations and presentations moving to a virtual format.
Once you have secured your award the work shouldn’t stop there, visibility is key and it’s important to maximise your success. An award win can go a long way; however, this can go even further if leveraged in the right way. Shout about your achievement from the roof tops, in our case the 18th floor terrace! Many awards offer easily manageable marketing collateral such as badges, which can facilitate exposure at no cost – add them to your website, email signatures, newsletters etc.
“Once you have secured your award the work shouldn’t stop there, visibility is key and it’s important to maximise your success.”
At DLD College London, we are the only school in the country to achieve multiple awards in one year, which is quite unique. To hold such titles also helps us to stand out among our competitors, and is testament to our individuality as a school. To have achieved these awards during a pandemic year makes them even more special and reflects well on the innovative work that we have done to support our school community.
Upon securing these accolades, all that we do and strive to achieve is validated and gives our DLD College London community, including prospective parents and students, the confidence and reassurance that we are operating at the gold standard.
To find out more about DLD College London, visit www.dldcollege.co.uk
