Ministries of Education and the Media: Close Encounters – Mixed Emotions

Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

Forum on Education No. 14 Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

IIEP, Paris, 20-21 June 2002

Gudmund Hernes, in collaboration with Michaela Martin and Estelle Zadra

International Institute for Educational Planning

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep The views and opinions expressed in this booklet are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of UNESCO or the IIEP. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this review do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO or the IIEP concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or its authorities, or concerning its frontiers or boundaries.

The publication costs of this study have been covered through a grant-in-aid offered by UNESCO and by voluntary contributions made by several Member States of UNESCO, the list of which will be found at the end of the volume.

Published by: International Institute for Educational Planning 7-9 rue Eugène-Delacroix, 75116 Paris e-mail: [email protected] IIEP web site: http://www.unesco.org/iiep

Cover design: Pierre Finot Typesetting: Linéale Production Printed in IIEP’s printshop ISBN: 92-803-1227-8 © UNESCO 2003

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep CONTENTS

Pages Abbreviations 9 Preface 11 Part I. A marriage of two minds, Gudmund Hernes 15 Introduction 15 Structural sources of conflicts between ministries and the media 18 Conclusion 31 Part II. Communicating via the mass media for educational reforms: a Senegalese experience, Mamadou Ndoye 33 Introduction Conducting a difficult but necessary reform: the importance of communication 33 Communicating in a troubled media environment 35 What should we communicate? With whom? To what end? To whom? 37 Scheduling communication on the reform: current events versus the long term 38 Encouraging debate between divergent points of view 42 Conclusions 43 In response to the presentation of Mamadou Ndoye, Gilbert Gardner 44 Part III. The role of the media in the construction of public opinion in education: an experience from Argentina, Juan Carlos Tedesco and Roxana Morduchowicz 53 Introduction 53 The written press and the construction of public opinion in education 56 Press and politicians 61 Conclusions: implications for education policies 62 References 64 In response to the presentation of Juan Carlos Tedesco and Roxana Morduchowicz, Jean C. Tayag 64 Part IV. Proactive versus reactive strategies: an experience from Norway, Egil Knudsen 69 The main challenge 69 The main problem 70

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Handling crises 73 Five concrete points for a proactive media strategy 75 Concluding remarks 84 In response to the presentation of Egil Knudsen, Molatwane Likhethe 85 Part V.A. Education policy and the specialist educational press, Robert Doe 89 Introduction 89 Relations with the Ministry of Education 90 A consensus is dead 94 Government by press release 98 Press officers and ‘spin’ 99 Two-star TES 101 Other reliable sources? 104 The dangers of initiative overload 106 References 111 Part V.B. Specialized press in education, Brigitte Perucca 113 Part VI. The specialized press in India and its attitude to educational issues, Dileep Padgaonkar 121 Education in the cultural context 122 Conclusion 126 In response to the presentation of Dileep Padgaonkar, Trevor Cook 127 Part VII. Television, Cyril Auffret 135 Introduction 135 The audience is ‘the target’ 135 What topics are covered, and how? 137 Relations with the Ministry 140 Trade unions and associations 141 Filming in a school 142 In response to the presentation of Cyril Auffret, Stella Hughes 143 Part VIII. Communication for education and development in Africa Programme (COMED) – Building systems and capacities to promote media participation in education development, Akintola Fatoyinbo 147 Introduction 147 The African media landscape 147 Why? 149 Four ways to break the vicious circle 149 The COMED programme 151

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Activities during Phase 1 152 Evaluation 158 COMED proposed activities 2002/04 – Phase two In response to the presentation of Akintola Fatoyinbo, Roseline A. Onyuka 163 Appendices 1. Programme 167 2. List of participants 169

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep ABBREVIATIONS

BJP Bharatiya Janata Party COMED Communication for Education and Development COMEDAF COMED Conference on the Decade of Education EFA Education for All EMIS Education Management Information Systems FAPE Fédération africaine des associations des parents d’élèves GICS Government Information and Communication Service GNP Gross National Product ICT Information and Communication Technologies IT Information Technology ISTIC Institute for the Science and Technology of Information and Communication MLO Media Liaison Officers MDE Monde de l’éducation Mercosur Mercado común del Sur MOE Ministry of education NGO Non-governmental organization NUT National Union of Teachers (UK) OAU Organization of African Unity OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development PISA Programme for International Student Assessment TES Times Educational Supplement

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

TIMMS Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study WANAD West African News Media and Development Centre WB World Bank USAID United States Agency for International Development

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep PREFACE

An institute for educational planning has to be a learning organization. It is clear that educational planning does not only take place in an environment consisting of schools, students, parents, teachers, other ministries, publishing houses or organizations and local authorities – the media play an increasingly poignant role in the environment of ministries of education. What the media address or ignore, support or attack, has a strong impact on the perception and implementation of reforms – and what they finally become. The media can transform the relative power of the actors – and shape both viewpoints and opinions of what takes place on the scene.

The International Institute for Educational Planning organizes a yearly Policy Forum to address and explore important trends and tendencies in the field of education. In June 2002 this annual event was centred on the Relations between ministries of education and the media. This Policy Forum created an opportunity for documentation and discussion on the crucial mechanism that the media has become for ministries of education to reach an important audience, to gain support for education in general and for specific reforms in particular. At the same time education is becoming an attractive content for the media – for both the general press and specialized journals. This is the case not only in industrialized countries, but in the developing world as well.

Hence, ministries of education and the media live a symbiotic relationship – but with partly coinciding / partly divergent interests and goals that are revealed through multiple strategies and tactics. The latter are in no way stable, but are constantly changed and developed as the two parties make better acquaintance. 11

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A basic assumption put forth at this Policy Forum is that both actors would gain from a clearer understanding of the other’s modes of operation and internal functioning, which would in turn lead to improved information and communication towards the development of education.

The Policy Forum brought together, from various parts of the world, policy-makers from ministries of education, as well as top-level journalists representing different types of media, viz. general and specialized media, published and electronic press. It created an ideal setting for the transmission of knowledge, reflection on developments and analysis of experiences from both reporting strategies of the media and communication strategies on the part of the ministries.

Among the questions addressed were:

• What proactive strategies are utilized by ministries of education when introducing educational reforms? To what extent is communication an integral part of policy-making? To what extent and in what ways do the ministries adapt their communication strategies to a particular policy context when targeting the media? • What are the reactive strategies that ministries of education pursue in response to unforeseen events? Are they even capable, so to speak, of handling ‘bad news’ proactively if they have the right vigilance, professionalism and alertness? • How is public opinion formed in the field of education? How does a particular public – such as teacher or student unions – compete for the attention and sympathy of media that may also be ‘courted’ by ministries? • What long- and short-term strategic alliances do ministries of education and the media develop to target specific audiences that may have their own particular agendas?

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Preface

• How do the media navigate between their professional ethos of being a critical observer of the social and political system and their privileged access to information from the ministry? • What strategies do journalists use in order to obtain exclusive access to information? How can competition among media open the way for ministries to give their own slant to news and comments?

The Policy Forum also revealed that relations between ministries of education and media are not only the concern of specialized services, such as press offices or spokesmen. They transcend this relationship – as they should – and have multiple linkages. Hence other various offices and officials contribute to the broader communication system of the ministry. Such a multi-linked system is also, however, an open door to leaks to the press that are not always appreciated by its top echelons. Educational planners play a crucial role in the rapport of ministries of education with the outside world, since they are positioned at the very heart of its activities and are the first to know when something is looming. Educational planners are nonetheless often unaware of this privileged position.

We trust that this publication will be of interest, not only to those who are actively involved in communication and education, but also to the primary audience of IIEP publications, i.e. educational planners and managers. Indeed, the majority of the results and reflections contained in this volume pertain to both political and journalistic strategies and should thus be of interest to a broader group of readers from among decision-makers, members of press and students in the realm of the media.

Gudmund Hernes Director, IIEP

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep PART I. A MARRIAGE OF TWO MINDS

Gudmund Hernes

Introduction

To what extent do the media exert influence? This is a classic point of discussion, not just among scholars in the field, but also among politicians, public officials and journalists.

Clearly neither policy-making nor politics can exist without communication – a scholarly analysis of the role of communication in public discourse is among the oldest fields of systematic study: rhetoric. With the advent of the mass media and their role for enlightening the public, mobilizing support among voters or undermining the position of adversaries, they have come under increasing scrutiny from researchers as well as from practitioners. This is illustrated both in academic pursuits such as political linguistics or in a cognitive dissonance theory, and in practical activities such as public relations, propaganda and, more recently, ‘spin control’ by which skilled agents colour the texture of a story and make the journalist tell it from the agent’s point of view and in the agent’s – or ‘spinmeister’s’ – way. The media can never be ignored and the press is not objective. Since news is always reported from a particular perspective, it can be both skewed and influenced.

There are different notions on how the media exercise their influence. Some theories take people’s attitudes as they appear, but argue that the media can provide facts that become grounds for choice – fixed preferences combined with new premises can lead to changed actions. Other theories focus on the role the media may have in changing the attitudes themselves, whether it takes place through

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reasoning and argument, subliminal influences or even through blatant brainwashing. Other theories again focus on the social embedding of the communication process – e.g. when the impact of the mass media is not direct, but takes place through personal influence in a two-step flow of information via opinion leaders. Yet other theories do not stress the actors but rather the agendas – that the media can, so to speak, decide what the public is invited to form opinions about or take a stand on.

The extent to which the media exercise influence through such mechanisms varies and is contested. Yet one form of influence is undeniable, and is not only a deduction from observations but also from personal experience: the influence of the media on the mood and frame of mind of ministers. Editorial praise or favorable reporting elates ministers. When a negative story comes out in spite of intensive efforts by press spokesmen, public relations acumen and co-operation with – indeed, even wooing of – the press, wrinkles appear on the foreheads of ministers, mirroring their worries for their repute and influence, their standing and place in history.

The reason for this is that those who exercise political power are acutely aware of the insight that W.I. Thomas formulated at the end of the 1920s – what has since been called the “Thomas Theorem”: situations that are defined as real become real in their consequences. This theorem also encapsulates the often-troubled relationship between ministries of education and the media: Ministers may change policies, but the media to a large extent determine perceptions and hence political realities.

Clearly ministries and the media often pursue the same ends: to inform, enlighten and educate. Yet authorities and media do not have identical agendas – indeed, they have all but opposed roles. The media are to report, investigate, probe, check, criticize and challenge what

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep A marriage of two minds other actors do or do not present. Authorities and the media are counterparts in the checks and balances of a political social system. In the set phrase, the media are “the fourth estate”. Hence their function is not just to provide a platform or a microphone, a scene or a screen for authorities, their role is to allow both public and private officials to encounter the critical press and face a questioning nation.

Ministries have to promote and push policies even when there are weighty arguments against them – indeed; it is when there are counter-arguments that decisions are made political. Both policy- makers and officials often feel obliged to under-communicate objections or negative side effects since opponents do likewise with respect to the pros. A government likes to present a united front in spite of internal dissent. Ministers are often masters at dodging questions and reverting to nice-sounding mumbo-jumbo to put a pleasant veil over cracks in the wall or holes in the argument.

Consequently, both media and authorities have structurally adverse interests which appear repeatedly under everyday conditions – and which can be translated into a professional ethos of skepticism and even mutual suspicion. The relationship between ministries and the media is often troubled, sometimes with mutual frustrations and recriminations: journalists may complain that ministers are never able to present a story succinctly and with punch; ministers may complain that journalists always go for the sound-bite and the catchy phrase rather than the valid argument; journalists may grumble that ministers have no sense of drama and of what is fascinating or gripping, ministers may complain that journalists always give preference to the negative. Where journalists see a detail that may enlighten the whole field, ministers may accuse the media of exaggerating trifle and small points, or of throwing issues out of proportion and zooming in on the provocative. Hence interactions sometimes take the form of

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ingenious evasive manoeuvers and doggedhot pursuit – particularly in situations where both parties suspect that disclosures may lead to a feuilleton, the banner for which includes a word with the suffix ‘gate’: Watergate, Irangate or – God forbid – ‘UNESCO-gate’.

In order to analyze and understand such conflicts, their sources cannot be accredited to the actors’ bad character or insincerity, but rather to the different structure of their agendas, – i.e. conflicting interests and heady imperatives that express themselves repeatedly in the course of everyday interactions, and that often become mutual skepticism or even suspicion and mistrust. Hence, it is useful to attempt to identify these different imperatives and the way in which they shape interactions and relations. Such an attempt is made in the following paragraphs.

Structural sources of conflicts between ministries and the media

1. Deliberation vs. deadlines. News is defined as ‘what is presented first’; a second characteristic is its unique source. News is not what everybody else knows and can affirm. What gives status among journalists, therefore, or what generates sales of newspapers or tuning-in to electronic media, is breaking news - a scoop or a flash, particularly when it is an exclusive! Journalists will thus attempt to get ahead of the pack – and if they are not alone on the story, at least to present it under a particular angle and often as one overriding issue (The New York Times chose ‘A Nation Challenged’ as a banner for its stories after 11 September; in The Washington Post one could read ‘America at War’). This is not just the case after dramatic events such as the killings at Columbine High School in April 1999, or the similar incidents in Erfurt in April 2002. It is also the case when being the first to announce the content of an educational reform, the results of a national exam or a strong attack by a teacher union leader. 18

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Ministries, on the other hand, seem to prefer to present their own, and the whole story, the complexity of the issues and the diversity of the concerns. They would rather present reforms as improvements rather than as impairments. Hence they choose to give a comprehensive presentation through all forms of media at the same time, while journalists prefer leaks so that they can be alone with the story.

There are several reasons why media like to be first with exclusives. They are not just professional actors providing public information, but generally in competition with colleagues for circulation, audiences and attention. Hence they engage in terms of what ‘grabs’ attention: concretizing subjects, sharpening issues, simplifying questions, polarizing parties, intensifying conflicts and personalizing matters.

Moreover, the media are actors in a market. They have a product to both promote and sell, subscribers to hook and hold, advertisers to attract and retain, revenue to make and owners to satisfy. If they do not succeed, they go out of business.

Ministries of education, on the other hand, often follow the logic of public administration, which meshes bureaucratic management and planning with political circumspection and strategy. Ministries follow routines of extensive factual investigation, thorough analysis and prudent deliberations, while political calculations enter into PR, presentation and timing.

But of course a journalist vying for breaking news is not indisposed to revere what is the perfect timing of a ministry. What makes a good story is not always good intention or a meticulous plan, but the overlooked snag or the unexpected foul-up, which results, not in pontificating speech making, but in inept stuttering.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

This is the reason for which it is preferable to speak of ‘Ministries and the media’ rather than ‘Ministries vs. the media’.

2. Official bulletin vs. dissenting views. When a ministry has prepared a reform, decided on a policy or formulated its response to some urgent issue, it has an interest in informing the public, not just as a public service but also often as part of implementing response. It sets out to communicate what the situation is to the best of its knowledge and what measures are necessary to the best of its judgment. Clearly a ministry prefers its whole story – which it tends to consider as the most complete and up-to-date – to be covered fully. It considers that the public is best served if all the key elements are relayed and if its press releases are faithfully rendered and repeated.

However, what authorities may consider to be the real situation, the news media often consider it to be just the official version: not matters of fact but disputable claims. Hence they need to be scrutinized. Not to take statements at their face value is indeed the keystone to the professional ethos of journalists. Their job, even in times of crisis, is to critically assess both the decisions and deeds of the authorities. Hence journalists may ask the following questions: Have all painful facts been disclosed? Have all relevant matters been considered? Have all interested parties been heard? Are all inferences valid? Is the picture complete?

To provide answers, the news media must examine statements, grill spokesmen and check other sources. Experts, therefore, who are competent to assess evidence, who may provide different views, alternative explanations and opposing arguments will be consulted. Indeed, after the ministry has held its press conference where all media have been present and received the same communication, it is this type of probing that can provide a

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particular paper or channel with a unique story. For instance, the press release from the ministry of education may run the headline “Education Minister: privatization reform improves schools”; the banner in a newspaper reporting it may run: “Expert: privatization hits the poor”. Once the ministry has presented its case at a press conference, the instinctive reaction of a journalist is to seek a response – to check whether there are deviating views, critical comments or divergent interpretations - and then to publish those that provide facts, views or insights that counter those of the authorities.

3. Priorities vs. agendas. Ministries do not just try to marshal facts and master complexities – they must also set their priorities: What is at stake? What should be done? What resources can be mobilized? Where are they to be deployed? In what sequence and to what extent must they be implemented? Often plans are worked out through a careful and time-consuming process and before documents are finalized and actions decided, often behind closed doors. Ministries must correctly establish their priorities and the progression of implementation must be well organized.

But even if media are excluded during the process of deliberation and decision-making, it does not mean that they do not try to peek in and guess what is to come. Sometimes bits of the whole that leak out may spoil critical parts of a planned reform, or what the minister had carefully planned to launch with a splash just fizzles when the media siphon bits and parts that add up to little – or which the opposition may easily attack and demolish.

Ministries also tend to present the groups that will benefit from the new policy: improved access to minorities, better equipment for schools and higher salaries for teachers. Numbers and statistics are often used to illustrate the story. The media, on the other hand,

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prefer personalization – stories either about representative individuals, or perhaps, as often, individuals that are illustrative of those that are either left behind or left out, pupils that are not reached, teachers who will not benefit. Giving an account of such stories is like throwing a journalistic wrench in the political machinery – it may mess up the carefully worked out process of the ministry.

In other words, where ministries may see their order of the day as the obvious set of priorities, the media will have their own ranking of what is important, the most potent perspective, or which story is the most moving and arouses the greatest human interest. Differing agendas make for conflicts and mutual recriminations.

4. Complexity vs. simplification. Authorities request specialists and professionals to assess the situation, very often by means of research and scientific theories. They may assess the quality of education, such as the TIMMS or PISA studies of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy conducted within the OECD. Researchers may analyze equality of educational opportunity or the impact of educational attainment on family income. Theories and explanations are often elaborate and inferences are often based on assumptions and probabilities. The whole picture is complex – yet it is the one authorities use as the basis o their interpretations and actions. Decisions are made with uncertainty, which research may reduce but not eliminate.

Hence conflicts arise from the difference between the complex picture that is portrayed by officials, professionals and scientists, and the simplified and sketchy reproduction journalists may trace. Experts can use the space they need; journalists have to stay within the constraints of the allotted columns or time-slots. An educational reform consists of thousands of interlocking decisions – on anything

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from curriculum composition to supplementary tutoring for disadvantaged groups, from the time allotted to mathematics to the retirement age for elderly teachers. A journalist must quickly discover what is the big picture, master plan or main plot.

The craft of a journalist is not to become an expert, but to quickly grasp key concepts in areas where they themselves are non- specialists and then communicate their findings clearly, concisely and in an interesting way to the public. For a journalist less is more – getting the essentials and popularizing what the experts are saying, but not necessarily communicating in terms simple enough for ordinary people to grasp.

This makes ministries and experts feel that journalists distort complexities and under-communicate uncertainties – they are les terribles simplificateurs. Hence authorities are often reluctant to release bits of information or preliminary judgments, which can be misrepresented or misunderstood. Journalists, on their side, often wait impatiently for something, even bits and pieces that they can fit together into a compelling story.

To put it bluntly, acrimony arises when those who know cannot communicate and those who communicate do not know. The more complex the situation, the more room there is for both to make wrong presentations and/or to embellish the news.

5. Bagatellization vs. over-dramatization. It can be argued that both ministries and the media share a common model of man on which they base their information strategies: A citizen should receive all information necessary for him/her to use when making choices or taking action. Knowledge should serve as a premise for decisions, whether it comes in the form of weather forecasts, party platforms, educational opportunities, lists of coming events or changes in

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food prices. This model presents the citizen as a rational actor who uses information to choose and act when alternatives and consequences are known.

However, there is another model of man of which ministries and the media have a different version. The ministerial version could be called “the citizen as a hysteric”, while the media’s version could be called “the citizen as a news addict”. Common to them is that neither one depicts citizens as purely rational beings – indeed, they are as much governed by emotions as they are beset by irrational impulses.

If the picture of ‘citizen as a hysteric’ influences authorities, they will strive to orient their information strategies towards soothing senses and avoiding (unjustified) anxiety or panic. Rumours must be forestalled and thwarted; contagious mass reactions must likewise be anticipated and averted. For example, if parents believe property prices in their neighbourhood may fall, or that the quality of their schools may decline due to an influx of new neighbours of a lower social status, it may result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that they may leave without waiting to see whether their fears are borne out. This may also entice those in power not to address certain issues openly or to do so only in a politically correct manner. Authorities see it as their task to pour oil on troubled waters in view of keeping people from rash or reckless actions. It is, by the way, argued that casting the public in the role of those whose reactions cannot be trusted has given rise to populist parties in Europe. They switch when some populist leader finally puts into words some of the things they perceive and ‘making sense’ of what appears confusing.

The complementary model of ‘the citizen as a news addict’ convinces journalists to search for headlines and stories that capture

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audiences. For them, the news game is about both catching and keeping attention; hence legitimate means are dramatization and sensationalism. Headlines must be made to scream.

Ministries and the media have very often, therefore, structurally opposed interests in the way of addressing and presenting the situation. This does not only happen in periods of stress or trauma, but also under quite ordinary or everyday conditions. For example, if the number of the young increases for demographic reasons, while the number of places for students remains constant, a ministry of education is likely to play down the effects – e.g. by arguing that though there may be some stress and strain, on the whole the education system will be able to cope. The media, on the other hand, may become aware of the fact that fewer students will enter their choice career paths, that student housing will become increasingly scarce, etc. Parents may begin to worry and their political loyalties may start to slacken off. Another example: a ministry may sit on a statistic that shows there have been no general or dramatic changes in school violence, whereas highly publicized episodes may convey a very different impression and even produce fear.

For the ministry the pitfall is bagatellization, for the media over- dramatization. Authorities typically reproach the media for playing up to a situation, while media assail authorities for downplaying situations that are both disconcerting and worrying.

6. Sobriety vs. sensationalism. In policy-making both plans and characters – indeed whole organizations – are tested by events. For ministries it is, in general, important that such challenges are met rationally, promptly and professionally. Even in periods of stress – such as when comprehensive reforms are implemented – emotions must be held in check, risks calculated, responses measured and reactions on the whole kept sober. 25

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But what authorities deem important, reasonable, timely and effective – all things considered – is not identical to what journalists consider to be ‘good stuff’. The careful statement that is crafted for a minister or official may be ignored – or it may be cut or presented in an incomplete form that authorities may consider as skewed, biased or even twisted.

Even when authorities gain access to the media, they still may not convey their main message because statements and/or appearances are edited. This means that cuts may occur in a context that those in positions of authority find misleading, or their views are challenged by experts with opposing or alternative points for view. Ministers may give interviews, but what they read in the paper is not what they meant to convey and what they see on television is pruned so that a different meaning is conveyed.

One reason for this is that media do not thrive on bare statements, but on what grabs attention, and particularly on conflicts with a ‘human touch’. This is not what is found in wordy press releases or convoluted statements. Hence the media for hunt the common person whose fate makes the point and with whom their audiences can identify. And they hunt for informers who can make the catchy sound-bite when a ministry aims at de-dramatizing the situation or tries to soften events.

Hence journalists will easily reproach authorities and experts for not facing up to the imperatives of their medium, while authorities on their side quickly censure journalists for hype and sensation mongering.

7. Responsibility vs. recklessness. Authorities are required to make decisions with potentially important – sometimes beneficial, sometimes grave – impacts on the public: changes in financing may

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result in a drastically changed school structure, new rules may exclude a large number of students from entering the field of medicine, the opening or closing of university may mean the make or break of a whole region, a new system of school inspection may strongly affect the welfare of teachers and pupils. In order to introduce and implement reforms they have to go through a process of review and analysis before decisions are taken – although sometimes sweeping changes are proposed in election campaigns.

The media have another imperative: to get the facts on the table and the truth to the public. The paramount norm for journalists is that people must be told the facts and then allowed to make up their own minds and judgments. Situations are not to be defined by the authorities alone. People are adult citizens, not children, and the role of the media is not to be their brothers’ keepers. Responsible action comes from persons who are allowed to take charge of their own lives having been provided different points of view

Hence reforms considered by ministries to be well-regimented and taken under full political responsibility are likely to be described by the media as only one policy choice among others – and sometimes carried out either to court specific publics or interest groups: politics is not neutral. When this is pointed out, ministries may consider the reports or disclosures to be partial or even partisan – the media are not neutral either. Their reporting sometimes borders on the irresponsible or reckless, contributing to producing problems rather than to their resolution. The media on their side may find that authorities wrongly take responsibilities away from people.

8. Science vs. contentions. It is not just ministries and the media that get themselves into imbroglios during information crises. Even

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though authorities can consult experts, there are counter-experts available to the media. Science does not only concern established truths but also just as much contending schools of thought. Even hard sciences have soft spots. Indeed, scholars are rewarded for formulating alternative explanations to the reigning orthodoxy and antitheses to the conventional wisdom.

On the one hand this puts authorities in a bind. Who are they to believe? How are conflicts of opinion between experts to be resolved? How can authorities make the public trust them if they themselves cannot trust the experts? If the state of the art is uncertain, how can judicious actions be taken? For example: when immigrant children are to learn the language of their new native land, what is the best way to teach them? Should they learn the language of origin first and that of the adopted country as a second language? Or should they be totally immersed in the language of their adopted country from the day of their arrival? There is no consensus among scholars on this matter.

For the media the situation is different. First, they envisage as their role to uncover and expose such conflicting views among professionals – thereby fulfilling the critical function of the press. Moreover, it is not easy to fault scholars who ordinarily are hidden in their studies or laboratories to seize the opportunity for publicity provided by a crisis. Hence differences in theories, explanations and outlook between competing professional camps are sharpened and overexposed. Second, controversy in itself produces attention and thus attracts both readers and viewers.

Such highly published conflicts among experts can worsen an already difficult situation for ministries. People are prone to be anxious when they do not comprehend what is important, and distressed when presumed experts do not have clear answers.

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Who are ordinary citizens supposed to turn to? They will, however, delve into a paper to follow the controversy.

For both authorities and the public the world is so much more uncomplicated when it is ‘one’. But conflicting worldviews always attract more readers and viewers.

9. Credibility vs. cover-up. Ministries, even in the best of circumstances, are tempted to marshal facts for effective advocacy. Hence they may be selective in the use of experts, particularly when there are different or competing schools of thought. But selection may be considered or construed as suppression of other relevant facts or pertinent alternative arguments. This can burgeon into a theme for conflict in its own right. The professional informers – journalists – can come to consider themselves misled, possibly by intention, by the authorities. The same holds when ministries report the results of reforms, and the opponents of policies may claim that only the sunny side has been presented.

The media, on the other hand, may consider it a professional vice to give authorities the benefit of the doubt – their professional obligation is to ensure that the whole picture is presented and that all reasonable points of view have been expressed. Hence journalists have to look behind veils and make sure that there are no skeletons in the closet. Not only the credibility of ministries are at stake – so is that of their own profession.

10. Causes vs. blame. Social change is generally conceptualized in terms of forces and causes. Politics is conceptualized in terms of decisions – and hence in terms of honour and blame.

Educational reforms are generally introduced in order to enhance the public good – improved attainments of children, better working

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conditions for teachers, enhanced skills for the labour market. But plans do not always produce the intended results and may also generate unwelcome side effects. Expanded university education for ICT professionals may be introduced just before the market collapses. Training of more doctors may result in greater public expenses for health care. In other words: policies may fail or have defects for good reasons. Often negative effects are due not to design, but to interactions with extraneous factors. But of course, politicians are not blameless holy men and ministries are not temples of virtue. Different policies might have produced better results.

Hence the media have the right not just to ask: “What has happened?” but also “Who is responsible?” – or flatly “Who is at fault?”. Is what has happened just a question of unfortunate circumstances, or is it the result of mismanagement, negligence, inattention or incompetence? Is the occurrence not an unfortunate fate but an avoidable accident? Is the outcome not an act of God but a misdeed by man?

By asking such questions the media can shift the attention from actions to causes, from course of events to persons to blame, and on such issues there are likely to be at least two points of view. Politicians and officials who have done their best with available knowledge and accessible resources at the time of the decisions, may of course be frustrated by all those who present their Besserwissen under hindsight. And ministers may discover that many want to bask around superstars but few are ready to share the blame with scapegoats.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep A marriage of two minds

Conclusion

The common objective of both ministries and the media is to influence both public opinion at large and specific target groups and stakeholders such as parents and/or teachers in general and/or through their representative organizations.

Ministries of Education cannot ignore the important role of the media in the formation of public opinion, yet they often lack an intimate understanding of their internal dynamics and functioning. Ministries have to talk through them – but also often have to argue with them so their relationship though intimate sometimes gets tempestuous.

The point of this review has been to underline that the marriage of reason between media and ministries is often haunted by conflicts and emotions, which are not due to bad characters or problematic personalities. Rather when misgivings appear they have structural sources in the divergent mandates, imperatives, constraints and professional ethos of the parties. Often media and ministries are engaged in what is called a ‘mixed motive game’, with partly conflicting but also partly coinciding interests that may create strategic alliances at times, but conflicts at others.

Since situations that are defined as real become reality in their consequences, the way in which ministries and media perceive and define each other will also have genuine consequences. Identifying and understanding the structural sources of conflicts reduces the scope for misgivings being generated by misperceptions.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep PART II. COMMUNICATING VIA THE MASS MEDIA FOR EDUCATIONAL REFORMS: A SENEGALESE EXPERIENCE

Mamadou Ndoye

Introduction

This paper recounts an experience with communication in support of a reform in the education sector. Although it was not limited to relations with the media, and still less with the press, it provided several opportunities for meetings in a framework developed for the purpose. In fact, what we will consider here are personal accounts of the meetings and moments of interaction between Senegal’s Ministry for Basic Education and the national media, in a turbulent reform period lasting from 1995 to 1998. The actions taken with respect to the press and the relations developed with the media are discussed in relation to the overall communication strategy that gives them their purpose. Analysis of this experience leads to reflection on the lessons we may draw from it, taking account of factors arising from the local context. In this respect, it should be noted that the author, who was deeply involved in these events, faces the challenge of keeping sufficient perspective for an objective analysis.

Conducting a difficult but necessary reform: the importance of communication

From 1990 to 1995, Senegal allocated about 33 per cent of its national budget – nearly 4 per cent of its GNP – to the education sector. Despite this exceptional level of expenditure, the gross enrolment rate fell over the period from 58 to 53 per cent – an average fall of one percentage point per year – making Senegal one of the

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

sixteen African countries with the lowest enrolment rates. This occurred despite several initiatives that had nevertheless been taken to check this negative trend: the introduction of double-shift and multi-grade classes in order to make optimal use of teachers’ capacities and classroom space, modification of the recruitment system (more assistant teachers and fewer fully-trained teachers in primary schools) to cut the wage bill, a freeze on career advancement to contain wage increases, etc. These measures certainly attenuated the fall in enrolment, but they also reached their limits. Bolder initiatives were needed to check and, if possible, reverse the observed trend. Faced with this necessity, which is vital for the country in terms of equity, democracy and development, it was decided to initiate recruitment of education volunteers, with the following main objectives:

• To hire enough teachers to re-open classes that had been closed and to satisfy the demand for education; • To create job opportunities for the tens of thousands of university graduates in search of work, by engaging them in a kind of national civic service; • To offer access to primary education for all children, and in particular girls and children in rural areas and disadvantaged regions.

The project called for the recruitment of 1,500 to 2,000 volunteers per year, with compensation amounting to less than half of the average salary of permanent teachers. In addition to the above objective, the project made it possible: a) to liberate more resources for non-wage quality factors, and b) to improve working conditions for both teachers and pupils.

It is obvious that such a reform carried some risks: loss of motivation, anger or even revolt on the part of teachers; instability in the volunteer service; social and legal conflict; skepticism on the part

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Communicating via the mass media for educational reforms: a Senegalese experience of parents; rejection by public opinion etc. Communication was supposed to help in coping with all these challenges: the main factors at work were stakeholders’ opinions, attitudes and behaviour with respect to the reform, and communication on and for the reform therefore had the power to influence, positively or negatively, their statements and their actions.

Communicating in a troubled media environment

The press, as mentioned above, was not the only vehicle used for the communication policy, but it clearly occupied the centre stage in a media environment characterized by a long-standing conflict between the public and private sectors. This conflict influenced the conditions and impact of our communication efforts. To understand this situation properly, a brief review of the history of the Senegalese media is in order.

In Senegal, as in many other African countries, the post- independence period was a time of single-party or united-party regimes. All dissenting voices were gagged and civil society was suppressed via the regimentation of mass organizations. The mass media were a monopoly of the state party, which, in the name of nation building and development, assigned to them the task of defending and illustrating government policy. Over time, they lost both their credibility and their impact on public opinion.

Democratization, which began in 1974 and received a further boost in 1981, led to the emergence and flourishing of opposition parties, civil society organizations and privately owned media – the written press first, followed by radio. By assigning itself the mission of making hitherto suppressed voices heard, these new media took up a position within the media environment that was, from the outset, opposed to the state press: editorial independence was associated 35

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

with opposition to government policy. The media sector was marked by two conflicts: between the privately owned (or ‘independent’) press and the ‘tame’ state press, and between the government and the privately owned press (known as the ‘opposition’ press).

The result was persistent prejudices, arguments posed in Manichean terms, editorial battles and adversarial relations. And it was in this context that the Ministry of Education was called on to formulate and implement a communication policy to ‘sell’ a difficult reform in which the press was supposed to play a major role:

• Pinpointing goals, messages, media and targets. • The establishment of the communication policy raised a number of questions. • Why should we communicate? Conflicting agendas.

In a context where political power is exercised democratically, policy formulation and implementation require the provision of information to citizens, co-operation among the various actors and extensive consultation of the sectors concerned. It was no longer possible to impose changes by fiat; it was necessary to persuade and to build a consensus through political dialogue. In addition, freedom of both association and expression offered many interest groups the opportunity to organize themselves in order to make their voices heard and allow them to prevail, notably by occupying the media scene. Under such conditions, the communication policy became an essential instrument in winning the battle for public opinion. In this case, its aim was to win the broadest possible acceptance by Senegalese society of the governmental assessment of constraints, requirements and resources that had led to the reform, as well as of the goals and strategies that it planned to develop. In choosing to put the spotlight on the conflicts occurring in the school sector, the press (particularly the private press) took a stance completely opposed

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Communicating via the mass media for educational reforms: a Senegalese experience to this search for consensus. The Ministry will need to give consideration to how this cleavage can best be dealt with.

What should we communicate? With whom? To what end? To whom?

These questions are all related. In awareness-raising activities directed to young degree-holders, an appeal for civic-mindedness and solidarity was conveyed by brief messages on the sharing of knowledge and intergenerational solidarity. Posters and bills distributed through the press echoed the message, both to harness the generosity and commitment of young people and to offer them an alternative to their lack of job prospects.

The principal message for parents concerned the number of classes without teachers and of children without schools, as well as the consequences of this for families and the country as a whole. The objectives were to make them understand and accept the importance of educating children and to induce them to assume responsibility.

In communication directed to teachers, the maintenance of the entitlements of the existing teaching force was linked to the need to promote equity in education. Teacher unions were called on explicitly to propose alternatives, bearing in mind the resources available and the need to provide schooling for all. This appeal was issued through professional assessments and articles in the print media, and it urged teachers to reflect and to exchange ideas on the challenges and issues of the reform, as well as its implications and consequences for the country in terms of democracy and development. Thus the debate was placed in a broader perspective than that of corporatist interests alone.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

In order to mobilize specific forms of support for the reform, a more diversified set of messages was tailored for Parliament, administrative and academic authorities, grassroots communities and general public opinion. In each case, the messages and media were chosen in accordance with the goals and targets. This concern with delivering target-specific messages did not deny the advisability of using overlapping arguments and of combining various media in order to reach a broader and more varied public. In addition, it should be strongly emphasized that communication means not only sending messages, but also receiving and, above all, exchanging them.

The press, of course, made very different choices regarding communication, being rather fond of conflict and of struggles between the players involved. It has even reported controversial events that never happened, as when a radio station announced that the Minister’s office had been occupied by disgruntled volunteers, when there was not a trace of a volunteer on the premises. These tendencies on the part of the media basically stemmed from an insistence on juxtaposing different political and social viewpoints, which is part of their critical approach to communication.

Scheduling communication on the reform: current events versus the long term

Reform is a process of social change that is carried out in successive stages: initiation, implementation, follow-through and evaluation. At each stage, it is helpful to use the press as a means of communication. Reform follows a long-term cycle, however, whereas the press is always in search of news.

The vehicle used to announce the education volunteers’ project was a press conference. This made it possible to discuss the ins and outs of the reform with journalists, so as to let them raise the

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Communicating via the mass media for educational reforms: a Senegalese experience questions that the public is supposed to be asking to help them understand all its components. This press conference also afforded the opportunity to provide each journalist with some basic documentation on the design of the project.

When it came to implementation, the press was used as a medium for mobilizing stakeholders right from the start. In reflecting the diversity of opinions on the project, the press also helped to identify the reform’s strengths and weaknesses, its supporters and its opponents. It thereby provided valuable information as to the communication and partnership strategies which were likely to set in motion the factors and forces favourable to reform.

At the evaluation phase, the press disseminated the results of the project and the debate over the lessons to be drawn with a view to making adjustments. It was difficult, however, to hold the attention of journalists, who turned to other events when the reform was no longer news. The obligation to sustain the interest of their customers worked against the long-term investment needed for the reform. In fact, education ministries do not work in the same time frame as the press. For this reason, the Ministry resorted to three types of action to keep the press up-to-date on the reform: creating media events, providing scoops and purchasing services. Journalists were very interested in controversial matters, such as a comparison between the best performances of education volunteers and of permanent teachers on teacher certification examinations. On topics such as how the reform was actually proceeding on the ground, its reception by communities, the opinion of headteachers and teachers, and the feelings of volunteers, the Ministry elected to enter into contracts with radio and television stations for the production and subsequent broadcast of documentaries and/or news reports.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

■ Developing policies and initiatives directed towards the media: relations, resources and activities

The Ministry of Education regarded privately-owned press as either a hotbed of political opposition or a muckraking press which was absolutely to be mistrusted, failing which one ran the risk of endangering education policy by exposing it to attacks and disinformation campaigns. Such a press was thus not welcome in the Ministry and above all was not supposed to have access to information, which it would inevitably distort with malicious intent.

To change this adversarial relationship, the Ministry set up a communication unit that reported directly to the Minister’s office, consisting of a journalist, an education specialist and two assistants. The unit was responsible for defining the communication policy and strategy, producing a communication plan, preparing public relations initiatives in collaboration with the departments concerned and maintaining stable relations with the media. It operated under the authority of the Minister’s office, and the funding for these specific activities came from budget sections provided for this purpose in the budgets of projects having a communication component.

The unit seized every opportunity to arrange regular meetings with the press: lectures, briefings, meals or cocktail parties for the press, as well as visits to newsrooms. Contacts began to form with the journalists responsible for the education sections of the various media organizations. Apart from the contacts made, these meetings brought the two sides to be better acquainted and promoted better understanding of each other’s requirements. They made it possible to discuss the volunteers’ project from a number of viewpoints to help journalists present the debate to the public in a more accurate and relevant manner.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Communicating via the mass media for educational reforms: a Senegalese experience

For our part, we also realized that the journalists were not specialized in education, and still less education specialists: they covered other beats as well as education. Moreover, they did not have enough time to conduct the research needed to write pertinent articles on educational issues. We therefore had to limit ourselves to modest expectations as to the level and substance of articles on education. Moreover, the unit had to produce special press kits on the most important aspects of the reform in order to provide journalists with relevant and immediately usable data. In addition, they were sent press releases on the events that marked the course of the reform. These documents presented, in condensed form, the bulk of the information worth bringing to the attention of the public.

Producing information for the press is, after all, essential, not only to ensure that journalists have a sound basis of documentation on problems with which they are not always fully conversant, but also to keep the initiative in setting the agenda for public debates. However, such initiatives should arise from and be carried out for the sole purpose of facilitating the work of journalists, and not to manipulate them by remote control. To retain their credibility, these initiatives, which are based on selective treatment of information, must be combined with transparency, which means giving journalists free access to data sources. Reports, statistics and assessments of the volunteers’ project were made available to journalists when they expressed a wish for a more complete view than that provided in the materials for the press. The personal involvement of the Minister was sometimes required to find an adequate solution to this question, in particular when, as is the case in Senegal, traditions of administrative confidentiality make government officials particularly reticent about transparency. These were the processes through which new ties, based on trust and willingness to work together, were established between the Ministry and the media.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

However, we must not be naive. Experience shows that the media (particularly the privately-owned media) are subject first and foremost to the need to sell to the general public. Simplification and the search for scandal (in the sense of whatever is out of the ordinary and has shock value) in the passing moment are the criteria of performance and competitiveness for the media, as opposed to the perspectives (analysis of complex issues, constructive effort and the long term) guiding the conduct of education reforms as a process of social change. It is therefore advisable to use the clash of conflicting opinions, which also captures the interest of the press.

Encouraging debate between divergent points of view

The media were induced to listen to the Ministry. The communication unit prepared a weekly press review that reported all mentions of the volunteers’ project. On several points (e.g. delays in payment of compensation, irregularities in hiring, confusion or misunderstanding regarding procedures or content), this attentive monitoring allowed the Ministry to make appropriate and timely adjustments. The conflicting opinions and the criticism of the reform expressed through the press also made it possible to analyze the arguments of opponents, in order to learn what could be done to improve the project or in order to initiate and lead the public debate.

This led the Ministry to invite groups both in favour of and opposed to the reform on several occasions to participate in open debates broadcast over the radio and/or television, in order to air the views of both sides. The aim was to let the public decide, on the basis of a sort of cross-examination of all parties. This proves highly valuable when it is impossible for the stakeholders in the education system to reach a consensus on a reform. The experience showed that such debates could be productive, but that they must not be allowed to

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Communicating via the mass media for educational reforms: a Senegalese experience become a dogfight between the Ministry of Education and the teachers’ unions. In this respect, it is vital to obtain the participation of other key actors such as parents, head-teachers, school inspectors, members of parliament, opinion leaders and NGOs operating in the education sector.

Conclusions

This experience was particularly instructive as to the relations that an education ministry can maintain with the press so as to leverage its communication policy concerning reforms.

The first lesson is that one must never give in to the temptations of giving up, in contempt or in disgust, no matter what sort of negative behaviour the press displays with respect to education policy. An offensive attitude pays off in the end: one must go out and meet the press, produce information for it and respond to the information it delivers.

The second lesson is to establish transparency as a source of credibility. Information must be made accessible to all the media, without discrimination. They may have different ideas about how to use it, but this will provide additional material for discussion to uncover the real issues.

The third lesson is that a collective monologue conducted through separate and parallel channels does little to favour the interaction needed to change attitudes. Differing opinions must be allowed to clash, instead of allowing the government’s position to hide within an official press that is content merely to act as a sounding board.

The fourth lesson is that the communication policy of the ministry of education needs an institutional base and adequate resources if it

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

is to establish stable relations with the press and obtain genuine support from the media for its reforms.

The fifth lesson is to consider and to accept, for the reasons mentioned here and for others that were not, that the media do not have the same motives and requirements as a ministry. Such recognition of the specific character of the media does not preclude a partnership; on the contrary, it marks out the path to building one.

In response to the presentation of Mamadou Ndoye, Gilbert Gardner

Before addressing the specific question of the relations between an education ministry and the media in a context of educational reform, I will take the liberty of briefly describing the development of Quebec’s education system over the last forty years:

During the 1960s, which were marked by what we called the ‘quiet revolution’, Quebec went through the first major reform of its education system.

A few noteworthy facts on this reform: from 1960 to 1965, the enrolment rate for thirteen to sixteen year olds rose from 57 to 80 per cent; a secondary-level course of study was offered to all the young people of Quebec, wherever they were located in our huge province; fifty-five school boards were created, in order to decentralize power and bring it closer to regional and local authorities.

■ At the time, the primary objective was universal education.

Thirty years later, in the mid-1990s, another broad reform was undertaken with the objective of achieving scholastic success for the

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Communicating via the mass media for educational reforms: a Senegalese experience greatest possible number of students. Although schools were accessible to all, it was still necessary to ensure that young people could complete their education and acquire the tools they needed to join society.

To ‘turn the corner of success’, the government of Quebec launched a reform with seven major priorities:

1. Taking action right from early childhood; 2. Improving instruction in essential subjects (French, history, mathematics); 3. Granting more autonomy to schools; 4. Supporting schools in Montreal, the major city of Quebec; 5. Intensifying the reform of technical and vocational training; 6. Consolidating and streamlining the higher education system; 7. Facilitating access to continuing education for adults wishing to return to school.

It was not only necessary to carry out this huge undertaking, but also to explain it to the education community and the population of Quebec, so that the challenge facing us would be thoroughly understood and everyone would agree to tackle it.

It may be said in 2002 that the preparation of the ground for this sweeping reform is nearly finished, and should be completed by about 2008.

■ Communication: necessary, but not always easy

We may also mention that communication concerning this reform was necessary, although it was not always easy.

• ‘Necessary’, because the Quebec government must be accountable – accountability is central to our laws and practices of public administration.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

• ‘Necessary’ also because debate over major reforms is part of the democratic process.

This is a process that in Quebec, as in all democracies, involves the media, which brings us to the topic that we want to discuss.As already mentioned above, communication on the reform was ‘necessary’, but ‘not always easy’.’Not always easy’, because although all citizens have some idea of what a school is, they are often less familiar with the broad underlying principles of education and with what might be called ‘education science’.

Like all sciences, education science has both its own language and specialists, and it should be understood that specialists are not necessarily those who explain their discipline the most clearly. I will come back to this question of language.

Another reason why communication on major reforms is ‘not always easy’ – and this refers once more to the media – is that journalists and news commentators are engaged as much in criticism as in the provision of information. Even in North America, where the press may be described as objective, journalists often show the ‘dark’ or ‘controversial’ side of the topics on which they inform the public, and editorialists do not hesitate to assume the full powers of the ‘fourth estate’ – powers that often resemble those of an opposition political party.

Nonetheless, I agree with what Mr Ndoye, particularly when he stresses the importance of communication for the success of the reform effort. Although public relations can be a complicated exercise, or even a difficult and hazardous one, they are nonetheless essential.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Communicating via the mass media for educational reforms: a Senegalese experience

■ The objectives of communication

I also share Mr Ndoye’s point of view concerning the broad objectives of communication:

• To make the reforms understood, and hence to explain them in such a way that everyone, particularly stakeholders in the education system, can grasp the issues; • To seek to rally the greatest possible number of people concerned, or as Mr Ndoye puts it, to ‘win the support of public opinion’; • To give consideration to criticisms, which can help us ‘find the range’ and improve our reforms; this was done in Quebec after having published a first version of the programme of instruction for primary and secondary schools.

I would also add an objective, however, to those set forth by Mr Ndoye, namely “to focus on success stories”.

By emphasizing ‘what works’, we recognize the merit of those who have conducted certain aspects of the reform particularly well, we help stimulate other participants in the process, notably by setting a good example and we increase the level of satisfaction of the population, which is pleased with its education system and with the government that has improved it.

■ Conditions for successful communication

What conditions must be met for effective communication on educational reform?

Anyone whose job is ‘to sell’ will tell you that it is much easier to sell a good product. It is fairly clear that a ‘good reform’ will be easier to promote than a plan that is not fully ripe or does not really meet a social need. It is sometimes preferable to wait six months or a year to

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pull it all together before launching the reform and unleashing an entire media campaign.

Similarly, the public relations campaign should be preceded by systematic awareness-raising vis-à-vis the main partners, i.e. those who will participate in carrying out the reform, and who will be called on for comment in the media once it is under way. All those who have been convinced ahead of time will be nothing but praiseful in front of the cameras, or at least will criticize it less harshly.

Another fundamental condition: take time to develop a communication strategy. The more sweeping the reform, the less room there will be for spontaneity and improvisation. A large ship must follow a precise course if it is to avoid reefs. It is even possible to provide an alternative course in case uncharted reefs are encountered.

The communication strategy should identify the various target audiences in order to be able to diversify its messages. Teachers, parents, school administrators and the general public cannot all be addressed in the same way. The messages and means of communication used will be different, and the success of the public relations effort will very often depend on whether one has ‘said the right thing to the right person’.

Another condition for success: simple language – in other words, avoid bureaucratic jargon. In Quebec, we have seen that even education professionals sometimes complain about overly obscure vocabulary or platitudes. Imagine what the general public or the parents of young children thought when they first heard the phrases ‘transversal skills’ and ‘expected end-of-cycle attainment’. If some technical terms seem destined to stay in the language, then we must make the effort to explain them, as clearly as possible and as many times as necessary.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Communicating via the mass media for educational reforms: a Senegalese experience

Lastly, it is not sufficient to diversify the messages, but also the means used to deliver them. The mass media is often not the best vehicle: targeted publications will be preferable, or a round of meetings in which human beings explain the reform to other human beings.

■ Relations with the media

Since we must, at one time or another, have dealings with the media, which approaches in doing so are the most productive and offer the best chances of success?

In terms of resources, Mr Ndoye has drawn a clear picture of tools available to ministries of education: meetings with the press, information kits, television and radio programmes, debates between differing points of view, articles in print media, etc.

I put forward a few additional matters for your consideration:

First of all, I think that it is in our interest to prefer forums where there is enough time or space to explain such a broad, complex subject as educational reform; this topic is somewhat too extensive for a radio broadcast lasting 1 minute 15 seconds or a television news story lasting 2 minutes 30 seconds. The ideal venues would be feature stories or ‘public affairs’ programmes in the electronic media, and background articles, special reports, or even advertising supplements in newspapers and magazines specializing to varying degrees in educational matters. The important point is that the reform must have sufficient room to ‘spread its wings’.

Another strategy that can prove rewarding is to use those who are convinced of the value of the reform as spokespersons. Young people experiencing the effects of the reform, teachers, principals, parents who are satisfied with what their children are going through – the 49

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

main thing is that those who are experiencing the reform should talk about it. This will be more convincing and much more credible.

Another approach: take the time for personal meetings with journalists. A press conference in which twelve journalists ask two questions each of a ministry representative, who provides thirty- second answers, is not always the best format for clear explanations and for the creation of trust between the interviewer and the person answering the questions. Thus, one might use formats such as a meeting with a panel of journalists or simply a long interview (three- quarters of an hour to an hour), with supporting statistics and documents if needed.

A fourth strategy: do not neglect regional and local media, which are sometimes closer to the public than the major newspapers and radio/TV chains. Preparing statements or documents specifically for the regional press can bring a very substantial return. Including examples of schools or people who are experiencing the reform will let readers or viewers see the faces of people they know in the media.

Conclusion

I will respond briefly to the conclusions set forth by Mr Ndoye.

• An offensive attitude pays off. I fully agree: in communicating, it is very important to keep the initiative as much as possible and to ‘react’ to others as little as possible. • Transparency is a source of credibility. This could be restated as follows: ultimately, having the courage to tell the truth is always highly profitable in public relations. • Communication is better accepted when it comes from more than one voice. This brings us back in particular to what I just said: we should encourage people on the ground, who are experiencing

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Communicating via the mass media for educational reforms: a Senegalese experience

the effects of the reform, to speak out. This also contributes to the credibility of the message. • Partnerships are necessary. Joining forces with partners before initiating the communication campaign certainly helps to prevent surprises, and keeps the ship of reform from being battered by wind and waves. We must remember that our partners will also be called on to voice their opinions in the media. • An institutional base and appropriate resources will make it possible to maintain more stable relations. In other words, will give us the resources we need for effective communication. This is an investment that will certainly bring a good return.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep PART III. THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF PUBLIC OPINION IN EDUCATION: AN EXPERIENCE FROM ARGENTINA

Juan Carlos Tedesco and Roxana Morduchowicz

Introduction1

Access to information is one of the most indispensable elements in the construction process of the public sphere in general, and is essential to democracy in particular. The media has become the principal agent in the dissemination of information and therefore holds an increasingly significant position in the analysis and discussions related to public policy management. Although there is a tendency to amalgamate all categories of media, each plays a very distinct role in the construction of democracy and the opinion one may form concerning television is not necessarily the same as regards the written press.2

On the other hand, the part the media plays greatly surpasses merely communicating information. Its presence and the way it functions considerably affect both the content and the modality of processing information. At present, politicians are much more

1. This research was done as part of the programme “The role of Journalism in Education” developed by IIPE/UNESCO Buenos Aires, for journalists specialized in education in all Argentinean daily newspapers. The programme includes four seminars per year (focused on educational issues and on the professional practice in this domain) for approximately thirty journalists from all regions in Argentina. The programme also includes a project based on the monthly distribution of journalistic reports on educational topics to be published by the newspapers. Journalists elaborate these reports for other journalists, and they emphasize national issues in education. More than 10 reports have already been distributed and published in daily newspapers all over Argentina. 2. For instance, Karl Popper considered the television as a threat to democracy (Popper; Condry, 1994). Pierre Bourdieu wrote relatively similar statements (Bourdieu, 1996). Our purpose is not to discuss the validity of these judgments, but simply indicate the fact that they refer specifically to television and cannot be transferred to the rest of the media, be it the written press or the radio. 53

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exposed to public opinion than they used to be, and their performance calls for a particular ability to deal with the media. In order to illustrate this statement with an example that comes from education, it is worth quoting the testimony of the former French Minister of Education, Claude Allègre, concerning his relationship with the media his recently released book based on a dialogue with the journalist Laurent Joffrin (2000) we find the following passage:

L. J. “ …/… In your opinion, what aspect in the life of a minister is most prominent when compared to the life of a normal person with authority in French society?

C.A. “…/… The most difficult change is in my contact with the media. It’s terrible! …/… I thought I was well prepared, but I wasn’t. When I occupied the position of special consultant to Jospin, I was mainly responsible for higher education. I met quite freely with the press. I had established a relationship of trust with them and was used to speaking in my usual fashion, in a direct manner, without …/… Once a minister, you can no longer do that. If you make a joke or use a pun, it’s front-page news the day after. It can even become a major incident. …/… When you have gone through such an experience, you become completely inhibited.”

This paragraph illustrates several issues that are directly connected to the relations between educational politicians and the media: government representatives training to establish links with the media, the repercussions of their statements and the kind of language used to convey their messages to a larger audience. Although it is reasonable to believe that the majority of the problems that a minister of education has to deal with are probably similar to those of other politicians, the communication of education policies has specific aspects due to both the issue’s nature and the audience that is being addressed.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep The role of the media in the construction of public opinion in education: an experience from Argentina

Accordingly, it is common to find that educative transformations frequently face a lack of information and misunderstanding, as well as rejection, and this situation is only made worse by the absence of a timely and suitable strategy of communication to the public. Moreover, those who are connected to educational institutions and learning experiences are generally without a meeting point or suitable channels to convey the results of their projects. Finally, the capacity for educational demand, which is an essential factor in the process of quality improvement, greatly depends on the access to information.

Strategies for transformation in education were traditionally founded on the offer being adaptable: curriculum, teachers, buildings and educational establishments. Throughout the past few decades this approach has begun to take into account the role of the demand. From this new perspective there are two different strategies that can be highlighted. The first of these is financing. A good example that illustrates this strategy of education transformation based on the financing demand is the ‘vouchers’ modality, used especially in some Saxon countries and in some recent processes of transformation that were inspired by a neo-liberal approach. Another strategy aims to increase the quality of the educational demand. This strategy involves actions that are destined to improve the level of educational demands by offering more and better information on the overall management of the educational system and that of schools in particular.

Within this framework, this paper is focused on both the role of the press and public opinion. It attempts to provide answers to the following questions:

• Which is the role of the press with regard to the construction of public opinion in education? • Can the press strengthen as well as qualify the demand?

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• What are the implications of the media in public policies on education?

The results of a survey that was carried out in 2001 in Argentina on a representative sample of the population that reads newspapers3 will be presented and analyzed.

This is an exploratory study. The limitations of the survey as a tool to analyze the quality phenomena, such as opinions and representations, are well known. Nevertheless, we will try to postulate a working hypothesis that may become a helpful input for deeper and more thorough studies, in different political and social contexts.

The written press and the construction of public opinion in education

■ Interest in education news

Firstly, the survey was designed to gather information on the behaviour of audiences in relation to journalistic articles concerning education. Related data illustrate that news on education does not seem to appear among the priorities of the newspaper readers. Only 15 per cent of the people surveyed answered spontaneously that they read education news on a regular basis. This percentage places the interest in this topic of news in the eighth place of the preference ranking, behind politics, sports, general information, economy, leisure and the advertisement section. However, when the survey question is guided, that is to say when the question precisely insists

3. The survey was carried out in June 2001 to 900 cases that were distributed proportionally (according to the general population) in the cities of Buenos Aires, La Plata, Mar del Plata, Rosario, Mendoza and Cordoba. In this general sample, a sub-sample was also taken from students and teachers (from 242 and 202 cases respectively.) 56

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep The role of the media in the construction of public opinion in education: an experience from Argentina on whether the person reads education articles in the newspaper regularly, the percentage of affirmative answers increases to 48 per cent. Despite the increase, the number of readers of education articles is still less than 50 per cent.

There seem to be two large segments among readers of education news. The first group comprises those who are personally related to the education sector: teachers, students and parents whose children are attending school and university. Within this segment there are those who read education news because: “…my children are studying”, “…they are related to my profession” or “…I am studying”.

The second segment consists of people who are interested in education as citizens. They are the ones who say they read education news because: “… it is a subject that is very important for the future”, or “because they want to be informed”.

It is interesting to point out that only half of the people who do not read education news claim that they are not interested in the subject. The other half mentions reasons that are related to news content or layout: “… I cannot find the information I am interested in”, “… the articles are superficial”; “… newspapers lie”. People who are personally involved in the field of education (teachers, university students) are more frequent to put forward this type of reasons. Consequently, personal experience, depending on if it is good or bad, may cause simultaneously either a great interest in education or a complete lack of interest in what is communicated.

This relative dissatisfaction with news provided by newspapers is important in the analysis of the role of the media in the construction of public opinion, and will be discussed in the following section.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

■ How is public opinion on education formed?

There are two ways through which the media affect and influence public opinion. The first is its authority to establish the agenda (agenda-setting) of topics to be discussed. Either by inclusion or exclusion, the media decides which issues are to be presented. The second way is its control to define what is being said about the topic proposed for the agenda.

With regard to the first point, the media establish both the chronology and frequency of the news. They select information that will or will not be part of the agenda, according to what the media consider or evaluate as liable to be ‘news’. The question in this study was: “How does the role of agenda-setting work in the specific case of education topics?”

The survey data indicate that newspaper readers remember news and articles that were most frequently selected by newspapers and given more relevance by the press. People surveyed remembered, spontaneously or after having been prompted, such themes as teachers’ strikes and school violence (often from newspapers).

Not only do readers recognize education events that were released in the press, but they also agree to identify them as significant. Thus, according to the remarks in the survey, union conflicts and school violence were not only recognized as the most read and remembered events, but they were also considered to be the most important. The media, therefore, defines the topics for discussion, but also determines their hierarchy.

Consequently, it is interesting to return to the hypothesis presented by Jean-Michel Croissandeau (2001), for whom the variable of being independent – which explains the relation between the media and education news – is the education system structure itself.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep The role of the media in the construction of public opinion in education: an experience from Argentina

The education system is based on the classroom as the basic unit of the organization, but education policies find it really difficult to reach the classroom. The policy modifies the structure of the system, study plans, teacher training and careers, etc. However, there is always room for autonomy in relation to what takes place within the classroom. This would be the reason why dissociation appears between personal experience – the opinion of certain agents – and information on policy and its structure that appears in the press. The media inform on macro-educational aspects or on conflictive issues for which the different agents involved in the education system have little experience or information. On the other hand, people tend to give priority to micro-educational subjects in which they have experience, but they cannot find that kind of information in the media. This dynamic in the relation between information and social factors would be at the basis of a phenomenon that has been verified in many surveys, and that also explains why people’s opinion of education is generally quite poor, whereas their opinion of their own children’s education is very good (Croissandeau, 1998).

Our study illustrates the authority of the media when it comes down to defining the education agenda. However, our findings also indicate that there is still a relatively important minority among readers who do not identify with the agenda established by the media. This tension between the agenda of the media and that of the readers is connected to personal factors (social status, education level, occupation) and also to the quality of the information provided by the newspapers.

Clear evidence of the tension that exists between the different agendas of the newspaper and the readers is reflected once more in the questions regarding topics people would like to find in the education section of their newspaper. The most popular option (over 50 per cent) was related to micro-educational aspects (“How do 59

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children learn?” “How are languages taught?” etc.) Conflictive issues that affect the schooling service (teacher strikes, school violence, etc.) – often published by newspapers – were only mentioned by 17 per cent. The readers’ demand for a wider agenda in education is important information that must be taken into account when designing a communication strategy in educational public policy.

■ How is public opinion formed in general?

The media have considerable control in setting the agenda. This control, however, is less significant in the definition of what readers think or say. Relatively speaking, what seems to prevail is that personal experience is a variable of greater importance when forming an opinion on education issues. This hypothesis is reinforced in the question of who the readers think has helped them form their opinion on education issues. Almost 40 per cent of the readers selected the option of personal experience. Furthermore, when asked about other sources of information, most of the people surveyed have obtained information about the subject before reading the news in the newspaper. Their jobs, family and personal and social context are important sources of information with regard to education subjects. “… At home”, “… in my son’s school”, “… from friends”, “… at university”, “… a colleague told me”, “… because of my own experience”, “… at the school where I work” and “… from my children’s classmates’ parents’. All these statements obtained 40 per cent of the answers. Personal experience as a source of information was practically equivalent to the source of television and newspapers.

The option ‘personal context and experience’ is placed third among favorite sources of reference for people who look for more information on education subjects. It directly and closely follows television and press.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep The role of the media in the construction of public opinion in education: an experience from Argentina

The more related the person is to the subject, and the higher his socio-economic level the more his individual opinion will be attributed to personal experience. Moreover, there are important differences in the role of the media and personal experience in the making of an opinion, according to the type of problems that are being discussed. Thus, while people acknowledge the strength of newspapers and television in the forming of an opinion on strikes, conflicts, school violence and education budget (macro dimensions), they refer to their own personal experience when forming their opinion on topics such as the incorporation of religion in schools or how children learn in this day and age (micro dimensions).

These findings make it possible to state that personal experience follows a certain rationality in the construction of opinion on education topics. When people refer to macro-educational topics or subjects that are not closely related to direct experience, the media have a more relevant role. On the other hand, when it comes to topics that are related to actual schooling activities, personal experience is much more significant.

Press and politicians

The influence that newspapers have on the way in which politicians and policy-makers may form an opinion is certainly different from the effect they may have on the rest of the population. The press is important for a politician who is a powerful decision- maker (minister, advisor, etc.) due to the public image that is built about them and their administration.

Accordingly, the specific difficulty that seems to appear in the field of education news is the fact that what is most important does not often become news, because of its permanent and monotonous condition. Education is a phenomenon that adjusts to a very stable 61

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routine. Every day, the same people simultaneously gather in order to perform the task of learning, which is a slow process with long- term achievements. Maintaining this routine calls for important efforts of management, financing, control, that do not comply with the logic of ‘news’.

On the other hand, what mass media coverage favours is education news related to current situations and conflicts rather than to processes, outcomes and daily achievements. For instance, when readers are asked about what they retain from what they read in newspapers on education, the subjects that are repeatedly mentioned are those that are related to strikes, demonstrations, conflicts and school violence. In that very sense, information concerning learning achievements, provided through the measurement system of each country or by international comparison carried out by international organizations, is usually presented in the press with a negative outlook.

In order to complement the survey, a series of informal queries to an important group of ministers and deputy-ministers of education in the Mercosur countries was also made. Another problem arose that should be the subject of deeper study. Education policy-makers share the feeling that the media’s logic, which gives priority to communication on current conflicts, may be what impairs the population’s confidence in school management.

Conclusions: implications for education policies

From the point of view of education public policy on communication it is worth considering at least five aspects.

• A communication course of action on education public policy should consider the value the population renders to personal

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep The role of the media in the construction of public opinion in education: an experience from Argentina

experience, both in the search for information and in the construction of their own opinion. The school appears to be an exceptional source of information and reference, either for those who teach, or for those who learn (students), or whose children study (parents). Communication policies at school level, addressed to the principals of secondary and primary schools, appear to be an important dimension to be kept in mind.

• An education policy about communication should weigh a specific strategy directed to the written press, in accordance to the central role of the press, as regards the definition of an education agenda for debate in the society. The population considers that the newspaper is the source that carries the most weight in the definition of topics, even when its influence in the construction of public opinion is minor.

• Bearing in mind the education agenda proposed by the media on the one hand, and the demand of the population for a wider agenda, on the other hand – not just current situations, education and poverty, schooling failure, teaching and learning – it would be appropriate to consider training strategies for journalists, which may provide the possibility of an opening in the agenda and a deeper approach to education issues. Following the same course of action, with the objective of expanding the public agenda on education, it is important to develop specific ways to inform on different topics from education public policies to the media, which may contribute to social discussion on education topics that are not as present in the pages of newspapers.

• Finally, especially in those countries with a very low level of social credibility, it is important to develop qualified and clear information policies in order to increase credibility with regard to information and to strengthen the legitimacy of the education debate in the society. 63

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References

Allègre, C. 2000. Toute vérité est bonne à dire. Entretiens avec Laurent Joffrin. Paris: R. Laffont/Fayard.

Bourdieu, P. 1996. Sur la télévision; L’emprise du journalisme. Paris: Liber Editions.

Croissandeau, J-M. 2001. “Lectura del diario, educación y democracia”. In: El Monitor de la Educación. Buenos Aires: Ministry of Education.

Croissandeau, J-M.; Etcheverry, G.J. 1998. La tragedia educativa. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Popper, K.; Condry, J. 1994. La télévision: un danger pour la démocratie. Paris: Anatolia Editions.

In response to the presentation of Juan Carlos Tedesco and Roxana Morduchowicz, Jean C. Tayag

First I would like to congratulate the authors for a very insightful study. It gave me the idea to do a similar survey in our country as soon as I have returned. We have been clipping and monitoring press coverage of education concerns but we still have to see how the public has been reacting to education articles.

Even without the benefit of an actual survey, a regular newspaper subscriber in the Philippines could identify with some of the findings of the Argentina study, even though it is sometimes different.

On the role of the press in the construction of public opinion on education issues, we could relate with the following findings:

1. The press influences the shaping of public opinion on education issues through its agenda setting - by bringing to the attention of 64

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep The role of the media in the construction of public opinion in education: an experience from Argentina

the public issues that should be discussed and sustaining interest in these issues through the duration and frequency of coverage. Press coverage sets into motion the discussions and thinking that make up the process of forming opinions.

2. On the divergence between newspapers’ and readers’ agendas - we have likewise observed the tendency of the media to focus on what the study calls ‘macro-educational aspects’ and conflictive issues such as teachers’ strikes, school violence, etc. However, a cursory review of press releases would show that ‘micro- educational aspects’ such as how children learn and how languages are taught, have been given equal space, though not on the front pages. Conflictive issues usually obtain front-page coverage, while informative education articles are usually put in supplements or columns. Still, readers wanting information on these can find them.

3. I would like to mention that the agenda setting of the press is not impervious to the influence of readers and information sources, such as the education sector. On many occasions (again based on the review of press coverage) the information that we, in the education sector, want to project and information that parents and students want to see find their way onto the front page- for example- results of professional licensure exams, performance of students in national and international competency tests, performance of schools and their ranking in the national and international communities, scholarship opportunities and awards.

4. Another characteristic of the Philippine press that is not reflected in the Argentine survey is its very divided nature. On political as well as education issues one would find distinct differences in sympathies. We could pinpoint at least two that could be considered sympathetic to the education commission and at least one that is

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openly very critical. The sympathetic newspapers often welcome releases provided by the commission.

5. As to what extent the agenda setting and what the press says influence the thinking and opinion of the public, I would surmise that the observation in Argentina would also be observed in the Philippines in the sense that other variables such as personal context and experience would weigh significantly in forming the readers’ opinion. The readership of the Philippine press – specifically of the broadsheets, as the audience of the tabloids is entirely different – consists largely of the more educated social groups and hence are more discriminating in the information they believe as well as in the selection of newspapers to patronize. But as pointed out above, the newspapers often take differing or opposing sides on issues and readers tend to subscribe to those that express or reflect their own views. It would not be surprising, therefore, to find some correspondence in the views of some readers and their favorite dailies. It is also not unusual for readers to read all major dailies before forming their own opinions. Having a diverse media offers certain advantages.

6. On the influence of newspapers on politicians’ and policy-makers’ construction of opinion, I would say that this is not very significant. The influence would most likely be not in their formation of opinion but in deciding which of their opinions should be made public and how. Press could also influence the way they behave and how discrete they should be, and if the press reflects their constituents’ sentiments, policy-makers would pay attention. Otherwise, it is usually the other way around - politicians trying to either influence public opinion through the press or to influence

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep The role of the media in the construction of public opinion in education: an experience from Argentina

the press. Constituents have direct access to their representatives and use channels other than the media. The press is often relied on, however, to act as fiscalizer.

7. I endorse the recommendation to use channels such as the schools themselves, professional organizations, and/or NGOs for influencing public opinion, rather than the press

8. Training of journalists is also a good idea, but we should focus on the sympathetic ones, or those who could be won over or neutralized. There are incorrigible elements in the media and it would be a waste of resources trying to gain their confidence. There is one reform that we have been trying to promote for more than a decade - the rationalization of the public higher education system. State universities and colleges have been created to address the issues of access and equity - to provide access to higher education in locations and in fields that are not adequately covered by the private sector. But these public colleges and universities have increased considerably and are now duplicating programmes offered by the private sector and effectively crowding it out. Considering the limited resources for education the large number of state-subsidized higher education institutions has resulted in declining budget per institution, constraining the schools’ capacity to provide quality education. The creation of state universities and colleges is a legislative prerogative and we would like our legislators to stop creating more new state higher education institutions and the public to stop wanting new ones. We are looking on the media to help us in this advocacy campaign, and the studies presented by Juan Carlos Tedesco and the other authors of this volume provide an array of strategies that we could adapt in dealing with the media in the Philippines.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep PART IV. PROACTIVE VERSUS REACTIVE STRATEGIES: AN EXPERIENCE FROM NORWAY

Egil Knudsen

The main challenge

Until the end of the 1980s, Norwegian ministries and other public bodies did to a large extent lack any well thought-out media strategy. The ministers and their staff presented their white papers and other official documents in the traditional way, and afterwards reacted to what was in print, often complaining about the journalists.

Although some media were ‘friendly’ and one could always expect positive coverage from journalists and editors who to a great degree were members – and even political representatives – of the governing party. To the extent that there was a strategy, this consisted of using the party press as part of its total political effort. In a strategy document from the Labour Party Press from the early 1960s it is stated: ‘The Government and the Ministers should always be described with the greatest enthusiasm’. This is the way the ‘friendly’ press worked, regardless of whether the government was social democratic, conservative or somewhere in between. The politicians possibly saw this as sufficient, considering the way the press worked at that time.

Information offices were not well developed. Most ministries only had one information officer, and often this person was placed a long way down on the organizational chart. In a few cases there was some form of contact between the minister and the information officer, but surely not in a formalized and systematic way.

I have no detailed knowledge about the situation worldwide at that time, but I would think other countries - especially in the Nordic 69

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region, but also other European countries - would recognize what I describe.

All the same, we should be able to draw the following conclusions: the media picture and types of journalists and editorial offices we experienced twenty years ago are of a dying breed - in Norway practically non-existent. Today’s media, whether we are talking about radio, television, newspapers or electronic news services, have totally different expectations of news items, presentation and formalized forms of contact. This does of course place completely different demands upon ministries and ministers in general, and to those handling media and information work in particular.

Gradually, ministries have adjusted to this situation, but there is still a long way to go. What has been acknowledged is as follows:

• Information and the media have far greater roles in politics today compared to twenty years ago. I think all politicians and everybody working with and within the media can agree heartily on that. • This is why information offices have experienced a great expansion. In 1990 there were about 40 people employed by all the ministries together, whereas today there are 125. Many work specifically with the media. • Ministers have realized that today they cannot expect much assistance from the party press. • As a result, press and information work is far more demanding than ever before.

The main problem

In summary, it is correct to say that press and information work is far more professionalized compared to only ten years ago. Our current Minister is from the Conservative Party who also held a

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Proactive versus reactive strategies: an experience from Norway ministerial post from 1989/90. Her opinion is that the press and information work done today is of a completely different nature compared to her first experience in government. I think this observation is valid not only for the Ministry of Education and Research, but many other ministries as well.

However, a larger degree of professionalism does not mean that everything is perfect. The main problem is this: to a very large extent we react to an agenda already set by others, rather than setting the agenda ourselves – on our own terms.

Such a description does not mean that the information is poor. In situations that occur, both press and information staff reacts with both insight and competence. A large number of those employed today have years of experience from journalism and/or editorial work, and do know the way editors think. As a result, they mostly give the appropriate advice to the minister once a situation has occurred. But this is a reaction to an agenda set by others, which is why today’s topic is so important: to a far greater extent we must work proactively, not reactively.

The consequences of mainly reacting to media headlines are apparent:

• It is the media itself that sets the agenda; • Matters can be presented from particular angles that are not necessarily beneficial to the ministry; • The content is far more conflict-oriented than called for; • Too often we see articles in print containing directly misleading information.

There are several reasons for this:

• There has been little precedence within the ministries to discuss more proactive media strategies; 71

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• Among ministry employees there is often an inherent distrust of the media in general and of journalists in particular (and in some cases ministers and their staff seem to suffer from the same). Many people have had unfortunate experiences with the media; they feel that journalists lack knowledge, that they do not think in the right terms and even quote people incorrectly.

Sometimes I can understand such descriptions of journalists, but generally I think this is misleading.

Some ministry employees want to reform journalists, in order to force them to change their angle and write news items differently. In my opinion this is a complete waste of time. The only constructive strategy is to understand the way in which editorial offices and journalists work: understand why they think and prioritize the way they do, and then act accordingly (see below).

■ What can be done to develop conscious media strategies?

• Firstly, develop proactive strategies for handling the media. This is the main point in this introduction. • Secondly, develop concrete plans for handling situations as they occur because unexpected and difficult situations or ‘crises’, if you prefer, will always occur no matter how well developed the proactive strategies are.

Still, most of this presentation will deal with proactive strategies. These should always have top priority. This is where the Norwegian ministries – and I believe ministries in other countries as well – have the most to gain.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Proactive versus reactive strategies: an experience from Norway Handling crises

To begin with, we will discuss problematic cases/crises, which can be summarized through the following points.

It is first of all important to have a well-considered plan when situations do occur. Content and action will vary according to the nature of the matter, but there are a few basic common points.

Secondly, rapid response is crucial, and must be a demand the whole ministry will adhere to. All relevant documents must be put on the table, the minister and staff must be briefed and concrete solutions must be discussed and acted upon. But it is also important to respond rapidly to the media - both to the editorial office concerned and other media. It is of course possible to just sit down and hope that the problem will pass. But this hardly ever happens. Journalists who smell blood do not give up easily; there are numerous examples of that. Problems will only increase in scale by a lack of response, which gives the public the impression that the information that appeared in the media is correct and that the ministry can neither respond nor act.

Thirdly, never try to conceal relevant information. This is the worst strategy imaginable, because the likelihood of exposure is so great. Unfortunately, there are too many examples of bureaucrats and politicians underrating editors and their resources, and thus their ability to dig out all the facts. A lot of documents are filed and there are always people willing to talk about background facts. a) Watergate is the prime example of how wrong things can go when someone tries to conceal information. This example will live on in movies and history books forever. b) However, there is no need to go far back in time for another example. Bill Clinton did not lose his credibility because he had an

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affair with Monica Lewinsky, but because he tried to conceal the truth. c) From Norway I will illustrate with an internationally known public figure: Terje Rød Larsen. In 1996 he had to step down from his position as Minister of Planning due to some doubtful economic dispositions relating to the fishing industry in the north of Norway. Or rather, he had to step down because he attempted to hold back the facts. I repeat that we all make mistakes, but most people are given another chance once they admit to their mistakes. In this case the press had to dig out the full facts.

These examples all have something in common: the problem is not that people err, but that they try to conceal information related to their fault. The public will forgive politicians who make mistakes, but not the fact that they withhold information or even lie about it. This will affect any politician’s credibility, and a politician without credibility can consider him/herself as finished.

My fourth point is that responsibility has to be taken at the highest level – there is no use in trying to pulverize responsibility by blaming others. We saw an example of this in Norway only a few weeks ago, in relation to final exams in upper secondary schools. After the first day, newspapers all over the country had the same headline: Exam chaos! The background to this story is that before the exams started, the Norwegian Board of Education sent out a memo outlining which teaching aids could be used (personal notes, dictionaries etc.). But the memo had been so unclear that the different schools interpreted it in completely different ways. Teaching aids permitted at one school were prohibited elsewhere, although they are all corrected according to the same criteria. Obviously, this created strong reactions from teachers, pupils and parents. We chose the following strategy: 1) the Board of Education was immediately summoned for a meeting with

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Proactive versus reactive strategies: an experience from Norway the Minister and the General Secretary; 2) we demanded that the Board send out a new and clear memo; 3) the Minister publicly took the blame (although the Board is an independent body); explained the action that was taken immediately; and apologized for the problems this had caused. All of the fuss calmed down directly.

The fifth and last point concerns the need to move from a defensive to a more aggressive line in terms of providing information. Surprises will always put you in a defensive situation, but a damaging news headline is usually only one part of larger subject matter. Thus, in such a situation, we do not only give correct information to respond to criticism, but we also provide new information about other issues surrounding the subject matter. If the editorial office or journalist in question chooses to focus only on their own particular angle, we will approach other media. However, in order to succeed you have to offer the alternative media new, concrete information. After all, the media wholly depend on news for their existence.

Five concrete points for a proactive media strategy

The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research struggled for a long time with the problem described: cases came up in the media as a surprise and the angle and presentation was not what we would have wanted. Encouraged by ministers with a strong sense of publicity and knowledge of the media, we had to sit down and develop a far more aggressive strategy. We managed this by drawing up concrete plans as well as using our practical experience. This proactive strategy can be summarized in the following five main points:

■ Systematic contact with selected journalists

The key to success in this work is knowledge about, and systematic relationships with, selected journalists. It would be very hard to get

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positive and advantageous media coverage without these kinds of relationships.

A range of small, local newspapers that do not have specialist journalists covering our areas dominate the media in Norway. However, the larger editorial offices, both in radio, television, newspapers and news agencies, have journalists specifically covering education and research matters. This is our main target group. As Head of Information, I am in contact with one or more of these journalists daily, and more importantly, I call them just as often as they call me. Thus we are keeping the journalists well informed about current issues and particularly on background information, and on our own terms.

Our contact takes different forms:

• daily contact regarding specific issues; • background information on the phone; • seminars organized by the different departments; • background talks with the Minister and staff, both for journalists and editors, where no meeting reports are produced – if anything is to be put in print, this has to be cleared beforehand; in this way, the Minister can be quite frank without thinking about what will be referred to in the paper the next day.

It is important to emphasize the following: This strategy benefits both parties – the media and ourselves. As a Ministry we are interested in those journalists that have solid knowledge of our field. The journalists, for their part, get closer to the news and the sources.

The different newspapers and journalists have to a large extent their own priorities within the education/research field. Knowledge about these fields is of paramount importance in order to get our news through: 76

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• The liberal paper Dagbladet is very concerned about experiments in education and initiatives for vulnerable groups; • The more conservative Aftenposten often chooses to focus on quality enhancing initiatives and private schools as supplementary to the public school system; • The VG, a more tabloid paper and clearly the paper with the largest circulation in Norway, often focuses on problems associated with persecution in schools.

■ Selling news – in many ways the core of our media strategy

The Ministry’s traditional means of communicating is through press conferences and releases. This is built on the traditional way of thinking that governs the public sector:

• Everyone should be treated and informed in the same way; • Presentation should take place in ‘safe’ and formal settings.

A lot of nice things could be said about the traditional way of communicating, but it certainly does not ensure high-quality media coverage, which is the aim of our proactive media strategy. We have thus to a large extent left this traditional strategy.

This does not mean that the Ministry no longer holds press conferences. Matters of an extensive and complex nature still call for a thorough direct briefing by the Minister to the media. Examples of such matters are the presentation of the yearly national budget and large reforms such as our recent reform on higher education. However, my point is that this is no longer an important means in terms of presenting other matters, rather more of a necessity.

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■ Instead, it’s all about ‘selling news’

The basis of this is the relationship already built up with selected journalists. In order to avoid misunderstandings I will have to add it is not possible, of course, to ‘buy’ journalists. However, both parties benefit from such co-operation. The journalist gets exclusive news, which is exactly what journalists and editors thrive on.

Here lies the difference between communication through press conferences and ‘selling’ news: the exclusiveness.A few other differences between the two means of communication are worth pointing out:

• Press conferences are most useful to radio, television and news websites. For the actual newspaper, which is still the most important means of setting the agenda, a press conference is yesterday’s news already presented by somebody else; • Space is allocated to a paper according to news value: a press conference normally does not generate more than a small paragraph or at maximum two columns. Neither radio, nor television or news websites use much material from press conferences, as this is information already shared with competing media.

In our experience, it is increasingly difficult to attract journalists to press conferences (with the exception of extremely newsworthy matters, but these are few and far between).

Selling news entails giving access to exclusive information to a newspaper or television station. Who receives access to exclusive news varies over time and according to matter. In order to evaluate which media will give the best coverage of individual matters, we use our knowledge of the priorities of different editors, and when there are issues best suited for visual presentation we do of course chose a selected television station.

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This practice ensures the following:

• large and visible headlines, often followed up by other media (especially television and radio stations that tend to pick up newspaper headlines, often in the form of debates); • content on our own terms; • information that is factually correct.

However, we are also concerned with regional exclusiveness.

Our starting point is that Norway has numerous local newspapers spread throughout the whole country. This is an excellent point of departure in terms of issues relating to schools, because schools are inherently local. Schools, pupils, teachers and parents all belong to a local community and often the local paper is their main source of news and information. This has to be exploited in a proactive media strategy. On several occasions, we have organized telephone conferences where the Minister talks to twenty selected newspapers, one from each county. These papers do not compete as they cover completely distinct geographical areas, but all receive access to news exclusive to their own county. This method has secured high-quality news headlines in papers throughout the country, often all in the same day.

■ News before formalities

This point might seem problematic. For several reasons, a ministry has to follow the formal rules of procedure and provision of information. However, we should not become so formal that we are unable to follow the development that has occurred in the press over the last few years, and that we are prevented from providing the press with valid and correct information.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

A proactive media strategy builds on the past twenty years of development in the press – definitely in Norway – but surely also in other countries. I would like to make a few points in this regard:

• The press and electronic media prioritize to a lesser degree the same news, and both copy and share with other media. Using the same headlines as everybody else does is not the way to gain new readers or listeners. • To a greater degree, the press and electronic media think about the exclusiveness of their information, using their editorial resources accordingly. This development is likely to continue with intensified effects. • The politically governed press is disappearing. Twenty, perhaps even ten years ago, any government and minister could in the least expect to read a thorough presentation in favour of their party in the papers. The press was very loyal to the parties they supported, but this has changed completely within only a few years.

The Ministry must understand these changes in the press, and act accordingly, although this can be a highly demanding task. It takes a lot more work to sell news than to gather journalists for a press conference. But in my opinion we have no choice but to think of news in the same ways the editorial offices do.

However, our way of thinking about news must be balanced against the formal rules and procedures of the ministry. Even though we must understand the way editors think, a ministry has obvious restrictions that the editors do not need to worry about.

• First of all, the most formal of all arguments: the Head of State (the King) passes all resolutions, and the King should not have to read the conclusions in the media before having seen them himself.

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This calls for consideration. A minister should not be interviewed an hour before a meeting in cabinet. • Secondly, there is the consideration that everybody should be treated in the same way. Editors would react strongly if one of them has access to all the important news before anyone else. • Thirdly, we have to comply with the demand for public information to all citizens. Everybody should have equal access to information on education and research, regardless of whether they subscribe to particular newspapers or television stations. In particular, teachers, pupils, students and parents should have access to up-to- date information that concerns them.

The integrity of a ministry could be in danger if it leaks out more information than what it should.

My main point is that we must be aware of the constraints – or elements of risk if you prefer. But this should not tie us down to such a degree that we forget to think about news value and proactive work. For example, public information should be communicated through a variety of channels, of which the media is only one part. For instance we regularly send out an electronic newsletter to thousands of subscribers providing broad information on the Ministry and on what we do (we no longer publish a paper version of our newsletter; the net is both faster and cheaper and has a better outreach).

Over time, all the editorial offices in the national press get important and exclusive news. From one day to the next it might seem like we differentiate between them, but over a few weeks this equals out. It is fully possible to communicate important news ahead of time without offending the Head of State.

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■ Involving the whole Ministry

The fourth main point in a proactive media strategy is to consider what news value earlier on in any procedure. It used to be the case that the Minister and staff would first consider a matter before its media value was appraised. In my opinion, this is too late, and why the whole Ministry should be involved.

A few years ago, the Minister sent out a memo underlining the importance of media consciousness to all employees. Everyone was encouraged to think news value, and to alert the Press and Information Office about newsworthy cases as early in the process as possible. The employee or department coming up with the best tip was promised a prize. Although unusual for a Ministry, this certainly sends out a signal.

The following practice is used in order to implement this procedure:

1) All case notes to the Minister are copied to the Press and Information Office in the early stages of a procedure; 2) The author of a case note is asked to mark whether or not the case has any news value; 3) Staff at the Press and Information Office independently use their knowledge and experience to evaluate the news value of a case; 4) The Minister and her staff are alerted at an early stage about our evaluations 5) Important news is discussed during daily meetings between the Minister and staff and the Head of Information.

I will not make the claim that this practice works to perfection, but without doubt we do get far more headlines now then ever before – and at an early stage.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Proactive versus reactive strategies: an experience from Norway

Earlier on, the problem was that a lot of employees were handling cases they thought had no value for the media. Thus a lot of cases never got mention in the media, even though the subject matter had news value. The Press and Information Office would have seen the potential for news coverage from an early stage if involved. Now that we get copies of all case notes, this problem is eliminated.

■ Close contact with the Minister and staff – the ‘Media list’

Within the Norwegian ministries there is a great variety in the ways in which the minister and the press and information offices co- operate. I believe this to be the case for many other countries as well. In some ministries, the head of information and the minister meet rarely, whereas in others, they meet on a weekly basis while the press and information office and political advisers handle the daily meetings.

The Ministry of Education and Research follows a different line, with a closer and more formalized cooperation between the two parties. I am convinced that this is of paramount importance for a proactive media strategy and I will briefly mention the main issues here:

• All working days begin with a staff meeting, where the Minister and staff (one political adviser, two state secretaries), the Secretary General and the Head of Information all participate. The main agenda of the meeting is the day’s news coverage and the media strategy for the coming days. During my two years in the Ministry, I have worked with two different Ministers – both equally concerned about prioritizing media and news issues at our daily meetings. • At the daily meetings, the Press and Information Office has prepared the day’s press cuttings from the national newspapers, which are

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distributed to those participating. Normally we will find news items we have ourselves prepared and ‘sold out’, but of course there are also occasional surprises - often unpleasant ones. In the latter case we have to react in retrospect to an agenda already established by somebody else.

However, our most important tool at our daily meetings is the ‘media list’.

From the discussion at our daily meetings, we will draw the necessary conclusions and the Press and Information Office will do the practical work in relation to the media. For obvious reasons, the Minister and staff participate actively in these discussions.

The Press and Information Office is responsible for the continuous updating of the ‘media-list’, and makes many suggestions for news items – often after collaboration with the relevant department. However, the Minister (and staff) comes up with suggestions and ideas as to which matters may make the news.

All along, the ‘media list’ is our most important tool in terms of ‘selling out’ news to papers, television and radio stations.

Concluding remarks

Our Secretary General has worked in the Ministry for a decade. Through a proactive media strategy the media coverage of ministerial matters has increased dramatically. From a situation where we each and every week had surprises from the larger newspapers, radio and television, we are now in a situation where a large part of news items are prepared by us and on our own terms.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Proactive versus reactive strategies: an experience from Norway

This development is to a large extent due to our conscious media strategy. The methods we employ are neither sensational nor brand new, but what we have done is to arrange the different elements systematically:

• The Ministry to a large extent controls the sources; • The Ministry instigates white papers and other documents for Parliament; • The Ministry presides over updated statistics of all relevant subjects relating to education in Norway.

This leads to a unique source of information that the Ministry itself controls. This information has to be utilized, not only in developing policies, as once was the case, but also in a conscious media strategy.

These sources of information are to a large extent public with open access to journalists and different organizations. Nevertheless, the important point here is that the Ministry is closer to these sources, and has specialists who work with these on a daily basis. This gives us a comparative advantage. Our strategy is all about using this advantage, always being one step ahead.

In response to the presentation of Egil Knudsen, Molatwane Likhethe

When examining the approach Egil Knudsen takes or recommends, one immediately notices the number of similarities with what has been adopted in South Africa, particularly in the Education Ministry.

Of course these are some issues that play a major role when a journalist writes his/her story: attitude towards the government, political affiliation, relationship with the Ministry, editors in news

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rooms, deadlines to be met, relationship between journalists and their editors, critical versus submissive writers, etc.

The media strategy of the South African Government is very broad and illustrated by what we call the Government Communication and System Information (GCIS) branch. The primary task of this branch is to ensure that government properly communicates with the public at all times. In other words, it is not unlike our own personal watchdog. It interacts with every department on a regular basis to encourage, insure and monitor plans that are in place to deal with the media. The GCIS holds regular meetings weekly with all government departments and Media Liaison Officers (MLO). These meetings are the backdrops for information sharing. Each department informs the GCIS of all of its activities for the week, which helps and promotes the envisaged interaction between all government departments. Various departments that share information regularly, guarantee that MLO may assist and provide clarity to journalists if the MLO affected is not available for any other reason. This is what I call a collective approach/strategy. During these meetings, the MLOs help each other deal with issues at hand – they ‘strategize’ together.

Other than quick responses to media enquiries, the importance of prior engagement with the media in our Ministry is also emphasized before making any announcement. We either invite them in the day before (or even earlier) the day of the announcement, in order to prepare them and allow them some time to read documents and seek clarity to facilitate the communication of information on decisions and the writing of balanced stories. This has to be combined with an embargo until the pre-set time. I have found this to be effective in the sense that it removes the pressure under which journalists normally work.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Proactive versus reactive strategies: an experience from Norway

Providing journalists with the Minister’s schedule of up-coming events helps them plan their work. It also creates a sense of belonging that he/she is part of the Education Department and as a result must complete the job responsibly, and it helps editors prepare appropriately for the event. They can counsel their reporter in advance on what they should look for when doing the coverage, which is not the case when the story is a one-off thing. The schedule makes the media feel like real stakeholders whose input is valuable.

Dedicated education reporter: I have learned that if the media has an individual who specifically covers education, the departmental activities will be more than likely accurately communicated. Education Ministries have, of course, no control of this, but if the relationship is good with editors of any print or electronic organization they can be influenced so as to assign a reporter to the Ministry. This makes it easier for such a person to remain focused and he/she can easily put into perspective any information without really having to verify with the MLO. A dedicated reporter often helps reduce fragmented reporting resulting from the same journalists covering anything and everything.

Minister’s personal meetings with journalists and editors: It can also be very effective to organize informal meetings between the Minister and education reporters, e.g. an invitation to lunch at the office, can favour personal acquaintance. It is essential that journalists understand the Minister. Ministers often receive bad publicity unnecessarily (sometimes on the basis of an ironical remark or joke made during an interview or press conference), without malice on the part of the journalist, but simply because he misunderstood.

Putting a face to a voice when possible is of inestimable importance. The Minister may visit, for instance, media houses

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(editors). If the editor knows the other side of the Minister he is dealing with, it becomes easier for him to properly edit the story when in conflictual opinion with the reporter. If interaction exists between the educational office and the media, the editor can easily contact the Ministry for clarity before making a decision.

Be accessible: If the Media Liaison Officer is available at all times, journalists will have no reason to write nasty things, such as, ‘the MLO was not available for comment’, or ‘we left three messages on his/ her cellular phone’, etc. If the MLO is always there for the press, there is less chance of a misunderstanding the day he is not available.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep PART V.A. EDUCATION POLICY AND THE SPECIALIZED EDUCATIONAL PRESS

Robert Doe

Introduction

The Times Educational Supplement was established in 1910 as a regular section of The Times, the national daily newspaper in London. The TES became a separate weekly newspaper from 1914 onwards and is now the major educational newspaper in the UK. Its circulation is comparatively low (around 120,000 on average) though readership per copy is high (The National Readership Survey suggests an average weekly readership of around 500 000). The key role played by the TES in British education, however, rests less on how many readers it has and more on who they are.

Many national daily newspapers in the UK have established education sections of their own in the past ten or twenty years. However, these newer supplements and sections generally focus on the interests of consumers of education (parents, students and employers). In contrast, the target audience of the TES is those who are professionally involved in school and further education (a separate Times Higher Education Supplement was established in 1971). The producer interests include teachers, principals, trainers of teachers, education administrators and officials and other educational professionals, school governors and anyone with a specialist interest in schools and the education service.

The TES occupies a unique position both journalistically and commercially. It is regarded as the journal of the profession and is the single most important source of educational employment

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advertisements in the UK (where teachers are recruited locally by individual schools, not centrally by the government). In the peak recruitment period the TES is currently publishing over 4,000 vacancies a week. These are carried both in the newspaper and on its website where over two million pages a week are regularly accessed free of charge. The TES is found in most schools and it is widely relied upon by educational professionals as the authoritative source of news and comment on policy and practice.

In the past two decades, the TES has extended its coverage beyond policy issues first to the practical management of schools and more recently to practical pedagogical ideas and issues. The Times Educational Supplement now itself includes several regular supplements including the Friday magazine (devoted to school management and professional development), TES Teacher magazine (which focuses on practical ideas for the classroom) and TES Online (a computers in education magazine). TES Primary, which aims to provide primary teachers with inspiring ideas, was originally launched as part of the TES but is now sold as a separate title.

Relations with the Ministry of Education

Because of its unique audience, the TES has long enjoyed a close relationship with the Ministry of Education. This, on occasions in the past, has meant advanced notice of government announcements, early copies of official documents and off-the-record briefings with officials and ministers. Because of our specialist insight and interests, and the level of confidence throughout the profession in the discretion and reliability of the TES, our journalists are often admitted to private discussions and seminars for the leaders of the education service.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Education policy and the specialized educational press

The Ministry seems to recognize the role played by the TES in promulgating and explaining the details of new legislation, regulations, official circulars and guidelines to those professionals expected to operate them. And as the main forum for professional debate and public response to government proposals, the TES is also read within the Ministry – at one time it is said that as many as 600 copies went to the department each week.

The basis for this relationship is that it benefits both the paper and the Ministry. Naturally, as journalists we seek to maintain our independence and objectivity. Our role is to provide the news and information that we believe will appeal to our readers and to conduct well-informed discussions on our pages. The Ministry’s interest in the TES is presumably as an opportunity to promote government policy to our specialist readership. But both positions overlap and create at least some level of common interest in maintaining co- operation and mutual trust between the paper and policy-makers. There can be little doubt that by controlling access to information the Ministry is able to influence the news agenda. But the TES, in turn, has clearly influenced government education policy from time to time and remains free to pursue its own agenda.

Relations with the officials at the department have always been professional and usually cordial. Relations with elected ministers have varied. Not all have appreciated our role as the voice of the profession, particularly when relations between the educational professionals and the government of the day are strained and the coverage and correspondence in the TES reflects this. One Conservative Minister allegedly attempted to ban the TES altogether from the Ministry’s headquarters. Another, who served in the same government, said he did not know what was worst for his political career, to be attacked in the (pro-Conservative) Daily Telegraph or praised by the TES.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

One famous period illustrates the particular closeness that can occur between ministers and the media and the risks this entails. The social and educational reforms that followed the end of the Second World War – the period that saw Britain embark on its free health service and universal secondary education – sparked a new era of educational expansion. It also helped to establish the TES as a major influence in educational administration and policy-making, not least because the unique access the paper achieved to the highest ministerial level.

The 1944 Education Act was the legislative engine of these postwar reforms. Under the Act the Education Ministry itself was created to direct the new national education service, though the increased duties and powers of local education authorities (usually town, city or county councils) meant this was to be a national system that was locally administered.

■ A phone call from the Minister

This epoch-making legislation was enacted by the wartime national (all-party) government in 1944, in spite of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s opposition. The Education Minister was R.A. Butler (known as Rab Butler). He had begun building a consensus in support of his reforms as early as 1941. And that process included no fewer than fifteen private meetings with Harold Dent, the radical young editor of the TES at the time. Dent, a former teacher, had embarked on a series of highly influential editorials on the need for educational reform after the war and these seem to have caught Butler’s attention. Writing some years later, after the death of Butler, Dent (1994) recalled (perhaps rather too fondly) how their relationship began:

“…/… In September 1941 [Butler] rang me up and asked me to come and see him. It surprised me to get a personal call for my experience

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Education policy and the specialized educational press had been that Ministers of the Crown could only be approached through secretaries and civil servants. I was even more surprised when at the end of the ensuing talk Rab said: ‘Now, do remember, whenever you want to have a chat, just give me a ring and we’ll fix a date’. When I hesitated to take up his invitation…he rang me again, gently chiding me for my silence, and arranged a second meeting.

According to Dent, Butler listened as much as he talked during these meetings. But apparently it was not only the Minister who was taking notice of what the TES was saying. Butler was clearly using these meetings with Dent to influence his government colleagues:

“…/… A few weeks later Rab phoned me again to say the Cabinet was taking more notice of education and to thank The Times and the Educational Supplement for the help they were giving about this.”

As a result of these conversations, the TES was uniquely well informed about these crucial developments. But it is also clear that these contacts were proving useful for the Minister who on another occasion was to speak unguardedly of the importance of feeding the press with ‘honeyed cakes’.

Dent admits he became fond of Butler. But how far his judgment was affected by these exchanges remains unclear. He recognized Rab’s “patriarchal air of benevolent autocracy” that enabled him to dominate MPs in Parliament and was at least awake to the risk to the independence of the opinion columns of the TES:

“ …/… He [Butler] kept us well supplied with information without ever attempting overtly to influence those opinions – though doubtless he hoped indirectly to do so.”

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The 1944 Education Act, the foundation of the English education system for the next fifty years, is regarded as a monument to Butler’s careful consultation and consensus building. But it was a blueprint for a plan that was expected to take a generation to fulfill. Achieving anything at all in this locally administered system depended heavily on the support and co-operation of the professional readers of the TES that Dent’s well-informed idealism helped to ensure.

Most ministers from then on have had some sort of contact with the editors of the TES but the particularly close relationship of Dent and Butler does not seem to have been repeated – or even continued once the crucial Act was passed. Dent’s insight from meetings with Butler and senior ministry officials, as well as with the most influential local government officials of the time created the authority upon which the editorial and commercial success of the TES has rested ever since.

Arguably, Butler had the luxury of time for consultation – legislation during the darkest days of war was out of the question. But he also had the benefits of:

• A clear countrywide social and moral consensus • A political mood in favour of greater postwar equity • A prevailing optimism about social and economic improvement through education • Public confidence in educational professionals • Comparatively modest expectations on the part of most parents and employers.

A consensus is dead

Consensus and consultation in English politics are now far less fashionable, and not the least in education. It is important here to

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Education policy and the specialized educational press distinguish English from British politics, since in Scotland and Wales, maintaining the consensus with those who operate the locally run education service seem to be accorded a far higher priority by the education ministers of these devolved parliaments. In England, however, successive governments have steadily increased centralized control. The professionals who run these services locally have seen their powers and autonomy diminish and periodically have felt that the ministry is not interested in hearing what they have to say.

Accordingly, the usefulness of the TES to the Ministry has declined given that the political priority is now more to promote government education policy direct to the electorate rather than to professional educators. At times it even seems that lack of professional support is seen as a positive benefit to governments who wish to depict themselves as confronting the ‘vested interests’ holding back reforms in the public services.

The Thatcher government’s 1988 Education Reform Act was arguably even more radical and far-reaching than Butler’s Act in 1944. The changes it introduced included:

• a national curriculum and national tests at age 7,11 and 14 • devolved management and funding for all schools • reduction of local education authorities powers and resources.

Margaret Thatcher’s was a government in a hurry with a determination to break the power of the professional establishment that controlled the education service. Until this point, political interference in the ‘secret garden’ of the school curriculum had been an absolute taboo. What children were taught and how was a wholly professional matter. Now ministers would decide what was to be taught to every child – and what was tested. Market forces would be unleashed in place of bureaucratic control of the service. Consumer power – not producer self-interest – would rule. 95

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Kenneth (now Lord) Baker, the Minister responsible, described his vision of the service as a vast wheel with the Minister at the centre and thousands of schools at the rim. He would set overall standards and requirements but schools were expected to act like independent small businesses competing for customers and the per capita funding, which was now attached to every child.

Unlike his predecessor Rab Butler, who had had three years to build agreement to proposals which were then expected to take a generation to implement, these wide-ranging changes would be forced through by simply ignoring any opposition and would start to take effect within months. Little of the old post-war consensus and optimism remained:

• Britain was now a more multicultural society and also far more socially divided; • the very idea of a social and moral consensus provoked controversy; • personal aspirations vied with fairness and equity; • faith in social and economic improvement through education was in decline; • unquestioning confidence in educational professionals had ended; • parents now expected more for their children; • employers were demanding more skilled workers.

As was characteristic of the ‘conviction politics’ of Mrs. Thatcher’s government, there was little attempt to achieve consensus. Nor, given the Act’s radical upheaval for most of those who had run education for four decades, was there much likelihood of achieving one. For most this was a shock that was off the Richter scale. The formal consultation required by law produced 18,000 written responses, 98 per cent of which were opposed to the proposals, according to one reviewer (Haviland, 1988).

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Education policy and the specialized educational press

But when it came to arguing his case, it was not this ‘educational establishment’ as the producer interests came to be called – that Baker was out to convince. Nor the TES which was (rightly) expected to reflect their opposition. The far more important political aim was wider public support for these controversial measures. So it was to general newspapers and the wider media that Baker looked for support and to explain and promote these policies rather than the professional press with its limited circulation and hostile readership.

Generally, the wider media proved to be willing allies then and later since they shared a common interest in encouraging greater consumerism in education. The common target – the prize for both papers and politicians - were the aspirational, consumer-minded choosers who can be persuaded to change their voting intentions or paper-reading habits in pursuit of personal advantage. Indeed, at a time of declining newspaper readership and the growth of a more visual culture, the pursuit of the literate has become an important self-preservation issue for newspapers (Doe, 1999).

By the mid eighties, education had become a big story, perhaps the big story for the media. More papers appointed education correspondents and new education sections and supplements were created. Ministers have become increasingly vociferous about the shortcomings of schools and their remedies. Whether as a result of demand or supply, the Ministry has steadily increased its output to the media since. In 1988 the department had six press officers. By 2002 that figure had risen to twenty-five. In 2000 it issued over 600 press releases, almost twice as many as it had produced just five years before.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

Government by press release

Media enthusiasm for stories about alleged failings of schools and remedial actions proposed by ministers did more, however, than simply promote particular policies and politicians. It also played a part in bringing about what has been described as a change in Britain’s constitution.

Sir Richard Wilson, the Secretary to the Cabinet and therefore one of Britain’s highest ranking civil servants, recently referred in a speech (26 March 2002) to the pressure in recent years on all political parties to maintain a permanent level of campaigning between elections. He also suggested, almost without realizing it, that Britain appeared to be going through a period of constitutional change. He said: “…/… It is part of the great British tradition that we make big constitutional changes as if we were under anesthetic and only notice them gradually after many years. One aspect of this was that: “…/…The relationship between central and local government is changing. By a complex process over twenty years or so central government is now held responsible by the public for the quality of services delivered locally – education for instance, or policing – even though statutorily and constitutionally they are not primary responsibilities of central government.”

It may or may not be coincidental that Sir Richard chose education and policing as his examples. David Blunkett was Secretary of State for Education from 1997 to 2001 during a time of unprecedented media campaigning by that department (see below). He is now Home Secretary, responsible for the police and daily issuing many of the same sorts of initiatives, announcements and pungent comments that kept him constantly in the headlines at the education department.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Education policy and the specialized educational press

In my view, the relentlessness of government media campaigning, not least on its chosen battleground of education, has contributed to the change in public accountability referred to by Sir Richard Wilson. By frequent ministerial press pronouncements which have imposed – or simply asserted – greater control and influence than what legislative reforms had ever envisaged, successive governments have established in the public perception that they are running education now, not the headteachers, governors or local education authorities who remain legally responsible for many of the operational decisions upon which governments increasingly pronounce.

If anything, the incoming Labour government in 1997 increased this trend. Tony Blair had declared in 1997 that his three priorities in government would be “…/… education, education and education” – a clear signal that Labour researchers had identified this as a key electoral issue. Under Labour, control of the news agenda, which was managed centrally from Blair’s headquarters, has risen to new heights, involving changes to both the scale and the nature of the work of formal and informal government information services.

Press officers and ‘spin’

This increased media activity is reflected in the number of government press releases. On average the Labour Government has issued eighteen times a day since 1997 – a record total in excess of 33,000 in five years. That is in addition to the unprecedented amounts of taxpayer’s money spent on advertising government policies in newspapers and on television. According to one industry estimate, the government advertising bill rose by 70 per cent to £192 million in the year leading up to the 2001 general election. This made the government by far the largest client of the UK advertising industry.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Ministries of education and the media: close encounters – mixed emotions

The Education Department (Ministry) has been no exception to this increased activity. In 1995 the Department issued 338 press releases according to the Central Office of Information archive. In 2000 it issued 605. Nor is the impression this creates of a new hands- on Ministry responding to a national imperative unintentional.

David Normington, permanent secretary (most senior civil servant) at the Department of Education and Skills wrote recently in the TES (2001): “…/… The department is now at the heart of the Government’s agenda for transforming public services. …/… The days when the Department for Education set the legislative framework, hoped local authorities would take most of the major decisions and occasionally signaled changes of policy through circulars are long past. The scale of the tasks we face will not allow it.”

In addition to the increased volume of government announcements and pronouncements, concerns have also been expressed about the nature and prevalence of ‘spin’. This imprecise term is usually a reference to the attempts of special government advisers to gull the press into publishing a favourable version of a story by providing misleading or selective information or to minimizing the impact of unfavourable news by devious timing. Friday evenings and national holidays are common burial grounds. The most notorious example of this occurred on 11 September 2001. With the eyes of the world focused on the smoking ruins of the World Trade Centre, one ministerial ‘spin doctor’ (not, it should be said, at the Education Ministry) suggested this would be a good moment to bury any bad news.

While that was rightly condemned on grounds of insensitivity, using effective media management techniques to promote government policy (as opposed to party interests) is regarded as legitimate within the apolitical civil service, even if it irritates

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Stepping over the line from effective presentation to ‘spin’ – deliberately setting out to mislead or deceive – is not regarded as acceptable for civil servants who also have to observe the faint line between promotion for the national good (allowed) and promotion for party-political ends (not allowed). In recognition of these limits, ministers are permitted to employ political advisers who are not subject to the same civil service standards. And it is these who are usually referred to by the soubriquet ‘spin doctors’.

Two-star TES

With greater emphasis on reaching the wider public, the Education Ministry naturally accords less importance to briefings for the specialist press and at times may even actively withhold or delay information from it. It sometimes seems to do so out of pique or to register disapproval over some other story.

Education editors on general papers can also find themselves excluded at times. An education story having leaked out, for instance, to a political or parliamentary correspondent is often a signal that someone in government is not keen to have the details examined too closely by an education specialist. Such stories tend to generate more heat than light.

Exclusive access and briefings on new developments are used to ensure more sympathetic media or those with the desired audience get the story first and therefore give it priority. The TES with its small specialist audience and tendency to reflect hostile professional opinion rarely features. There have even been periods when requests for technical briefings on specific policy developments were denied.

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Conor Ryan, political adviser to David Blunkett when he was Secretary of State for Education, revealed the department’s preferred media outlets earlier this year. From his ‘Top Ten Targets’ (Times Educational Supplement, 4 January 2002 and infra), it would seem that the TES’s professional readers only rate two stars, less than the readers of the local evening newspaper of a small West Country town.

■ ‘Star billing’: the spin doctor’s top ten targets by Conor Ryan

Six o’clock news: The BBC’s early bulletin is the one families watch. It covers health and schools best - Mike Baker is unrivalled at explaining schools stories. Not easily confused with ITV News at 6.30 schools coverage. [Five stars]

Sunday Times and breakfast with Frost (a TV interview): The Sunday double act: a Sunday Times front page splash followed by 10 minutes with Sir David starts the week nicely. It beats a pointless grilling on On the record. But beware the ST’s own spin. [Five stars]

GMTV and Today (BBC Radio 4): The morning agenda-setters. GMTV reaches parents, while Today gets the chatterers chattering. The GMTV sofa may be more comfortable, but you must also suffer the John Humphry interruptions on Today. If it’s not on Today, other independent-minded broadcasters think it isn’t news. [Four stars]

Jimmy Young (BBC Radio 2): The soon-to-be-knighted Radio 2 octogenarian is still the best bet for an intelligent discussion, with plenty of phone-in input from parents and teachers. Not to be confused with lightweight Radio 5 chat shows hosted by young pretenders like Nicky Campbell. [Four stars]

The Times: The broadsheet agenda-setter, preferably with a front- page story backed by a signed Ministerial article. However, if you want to reach or even wind up the education establishment, try the Guardian. You can be sure of some good letters. [Four stars] 102

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The Daily Mail: Despite its right-wing reputation, it remains the choice of Middle England mums under New Labour and of non-activist teachers. If you are an NUT press officer, perhaps not your first port of call. [Three stars]

The Sun: The red top’s huge readership makes it essential to reach those who actually use state schools. Not for those who (despite going private themselves) favour trendy teaching in state schools for other people’s children. [Three stars]

Plymouth Evening Herald: Not just this regional, but all the local papers that lap up stories of repair allocations, key stage two results and visiting junior ministers. Don’t forget the local radio breakfast shows too. An hour at Millbank wraps them up. [Three stars]

The TES: Its teacher readership makes it important to explain policy and calm anxieties created by the above. But ministers feel it reads too much like a staff room whinge. [Two stars]

Channel 4 (TV) News: As it is broadcast while opinion-formers are awake, prioritize it over Newsnight. Jon Snow (presenter) isn’t as nasty as Paxman (another presenter), no matter how hard he tries. [One star]”

Leaving aside serious questions that have been raised about government advertising spending in the run up to the 2001 election, it is not my intention here to suggest there is necessarily anything improper in governments or their civil servants using media management techniques to promote government policy provided this is done for the benefit of the whole country, rather than the government party. On the battlefield between ministries and the media referred to in Gudmund Hernes’ opening statement, generally these seem to me to be legitimate ruses de guerre.

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My purpose is not to complain but to examine some of the unintended consequences for education of the frenzy of announcements and initiatives launched by ministers and their aides in recent years and of the tendency to sideline the specialist press and describe the TES’s response.

Other reliable sources?

When official sources withhold their information, newspapers increasingly rely upon unofficial and third party sources for information on the impact of policy developments; sources such as union or local authority leaders or pressure groups that are often opposed to the policy and have a quite different news agenda to the government’s.

Those sources, of course, may have a partial or mistaken view of the policy in question. Just as there has been some decline in official interest in talking to the educational press, so have contacts been limited between governments and their teacher and local authority partners in education.

Neither of these trends have occurred in Scotland, with its devolved government and separate edition of the Times Educational Supplement Scotland which exhibits just as much independence in its reporting as the English edition. The education system north of the border is quite distinct from England’s. Wales also now has a separate devolved parliament and Education Ministry. In both these countries education has traditionally been much more highly regarded (sometimes as the means of escaping better employment prospects in England!). The old consensual tripartite (government/ teacher/local authority) partnership remains intact. Ministers are prepared to talk and listen and education is far less controversial.

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Clearly if the TES is forced to rely more upon secondhand sources and hostile witnesses, there is a risk that our reportage is less well informed – and more critical. Stories may become more opinion based and less fact based.

The Ministry may also conclude that if it does not talk to us because we are regarded as unhelpfully reflecting the views of Conor Ryan’s ‘staff room whingers’ then we will inevitably talk to someone else and the likelihood is that coverage may be even more consistently critical as a result.

There is an additional technical reason why TES stories about government initiatives often seem to be more critical or hostile. The TES is a weekly paper, published on Fridays. The wider coverage of education news in other papers means we are in effect competing with papers able to carry the news of the week several days before we can. Therefore to add value to a story which breaks earlier in the week, the TES version has to be able to take that story further than other newspapers. That can be achieved by:

• taking the story further with more analysis or further technical details; • providing case studies showing how the proposal might work; • recording the reactions of those affected by the story.

The differences between our version and those that have already appeared naturally need to be signaled strongly in the headline and introduction. This will frequently make TES seem more negative where the extra that our story adds is the hostile reaction of the profession to a government announcement.

A ministry that was interested in avoiding this tendency would:

• ensure a specialist weekly knew in advance what was coming to enable case studies etc. to be compiled; 105

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• brief its journalists more fully so that they were able to give fuller background and analysis; • anticipate and rebut the negative reactions of the profession.

The dangers of initiative overload

Whether the Ministry confides in the TES or not, there is a danger that the plethora of headline-grabbing initiatives and announcements that ministers have insisted on in recent years are having a negative effect on the teaching profession. Each is seen as adding inexorably to their workloads or hammering yet another nail in the coffin of professional autonomy and self-respect.

Many of these announcements may have been intended to impress the general electorate but teachers hear them too and often see in them professional slights and criticisms rather than appreciation for their efforts. This has been a significant factor in reducing teacher morale. It risks exacerbating the problems of recruitment and retention at a time when a growing shortage of teachers promises to get worse. Constantly being told what to do, and how to do it, may also reduce teachers’ willingness to accept the professional responsibility for ensuring children’s learning.

Using the media repeatedly to suggest ministers are directly intervening in, or ruling on, education decisions that are in fact the responsibility of schools or local authorities also runs the risk that the public will blame the government for any shortcomings, in the manner described by Sir Richard Wilson (above).

Ironically, David Blunkett, the former Education Minister and one of the most relentless publicists in the Cabinet, also seems to have noted that tendency, though not that it is the actions of ministers and their aides which drive it. He told a Labour Party audience recently: 106

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“… /… Who to hold to account is a key question. …/… at the moment we have the worst of all worlds. Ministers are felt, believed and presented as having responsibility for aspects of our life, our well- being and our public services over which they do not have direct control. For example, the Home Secretary is blamed for a rise in crime. Yet the police, quite rightly, have operational independence.”

Whether that is the ‘worst of all worlds’ depends of course on where you stand. To many educational professionals it must seem apt that a government that has sown in the media wind now finds itself reaping the whirlwind.

For Blunkett, now Home Secretary, it seems to be business as usual. Under his predecessor, the Home Office produced 80 press releases in the first quarter of last year, at a time when ministers on election alert wanted to maximize their impact. Under Blunkett the score for the same months this year (but after the election) is 146.

Some at his former ministry now also seem to accept the dangers of initiative overload that result from the government’s perpetual campaigning mode. Professor David Hopkins, the new director of the Department for Education and Skills’ Standards and Effectiveness Unit, recently criticized the way schools are bombarded with new initiatives. Ministry officials had: “…/… thrown well-intended policies at schools in the most ignorant way.” In an unguarded moment, he told a recent conference: “…/… It seems now someone thinks of a policy and parachutes it into a school.”

The press office at the Education Ministry does seem, however, to be turning down the heat. Between 1998 and 2001, the Education Department issued an average of over 200 press releases in the first four months of the year. In 2002, with a new Minister and news management team in place, it issued less than half that number over those months.

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However, the department is still capable of sending out muscular diktats to order when the central government news managers at Number 10 Downing Street feel the need to distract attention from more embarrassing news on other fronts.

■ The TES response

It is not just governments who face hazards from this relentless media bombardment, however. There are signs that, after almost two decades of confrontation rather than consensus, teachers are wearying of the constant carping, even in their own paper. There are dangers for specialist newspapers as well in the growing cynicism or alienation of its readership. The impression that everything is just ‘spin’ or that all government policies are necessarily wrong or not working is not necessarily the kind of inspiration the idealistic and committed professional reader wants from their newspaper. TES readers show some signs of wilting under a relentless diet of bad news.

In recent years the TES had to respond to the following:

• greater competition in education news from general newspapers; • governments more determined to dominate that news agenda; • a Ministry more concerned with wider coverage and less inclined to brief the specialist press; • reduction in the numbers (and powers) of local authority administrators as responsibility; • devolution of education management to school leaders; • retirement from the profession of large numbers of TES readers in senior positions; • less reliance by teacher job-seekers on the paper edition of the TES because the volume of job vacancies means they can be found more easily – and free of charge – on the TES website;

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• teachers and head-teachers that felt increasingly overburdened by the greater workload imposed by curricular and management reforms, target setting and increased accountability.

In the past the TES had focused strongly on policy which ordinary teachers had a limited interest in. But they had to buy and read the paper because it carried most of the nationally advertised job vacancies. Putting those advertisements on the Internet meant an end to a captive audience and made it more important that we appealed more strongly to teachers through our editorial contents.

Our responses to these changes have included:

• Investment in our own independent research to enable us to pursue stories of our own choosing at our own time, independent of government or pressure groups. This research includes surveys and opinion polls, data analysis and persuading members of parliament to ask questions, which forced governments to reveal information otherwise withheld. • Sharper focus on the impact on our readers of existing government policy. • Moves to widen the appeal of the TES beyond its traditional policy- maker readership by shifting the balance of coverage towards human interest and success stories that celebrate achievement and demonstrate good professional practice. • Meeting the information needs of managers and governors in schools. • Devoting more space to professional and career development. • A new supplement devoted to practical ideas to inspire classroom practitioners. • More emphasis on marketing and promotion of the TES to key groups of readers. • Promoting to the wider media a limited number of authoritative

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news stories designed to appeal to both professional and lay audiences to bolster the image of the TES as an authority on educational matters.

We also need to face the challenges of the new electronic media. Not the least of these are the new communications policies ministries have developed to exploit the Internet themselves.

Whereas one of the major functions of the TES was once to convey to the profession regular précis of official documents, these documents are now readily available from government websites. Indeed, the Ministry and its agencies now devote considerable resources to meet education professionals’ information needs directly through the Internet. Being able to communicate directly online to teachers, schools and local authorities is clearly useful in the control of a centralized education system. It also reduces governments’ need to communicate through independent newspapers.

Producing a website is one thing, however – commanding a trusting and loyal audience, as the TES has for ninety-two years, is quite another. Newspapers provide a medium for comment and debate that is perceived to be free and independent in a way that official conduits can never be.

It seems likely that the specialist press will concentrate more on analysis of policy than description in future and will continue to focus on the impact and outcomes of government initiatives rather than simply passing on the details of those initiatives to teachers. If governments continue to eschew consultation and consensus, they can expect their unilateral initiatives to be skeptically examined and opposed by the professionals who not only read the TES but also contribute to it.

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References

Dent, H. 1994. “Chats with the president.” In: The Times Educational Supplement, 6 May 1994.

Doe, R. 1999. “The role of the media in the reform of school management.” In: Educational Management and Administration, 27(3), July 1999.

Haviland, J. 1988. Take care, Mr. Baker. London: Fourth Estate.

Normington, D. 2001. “How we’ll change the world.” In: The Times Educational Supplement, 19 October 2001.

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Brigitte Perucca

Le Monde de l’éducation is a monthly magazine read mainly by ‘stakeholders’ in the world of education: by teachers, of course, but also, to a lesser extent, by parents beset by education problems and students seeking guidance. The magazine is edited at 70,000 copies, but its readership amounts to more than 700,000. Le Monde de l’éducation does not know the same commercial success as The Times Educational Supplement, for example, not benefiting from funding from small publicity inserts and the teacher employment market in France not being an actual market in the true sense of the word. Since its creation, a little over thirty years ago, the magazine espoused, and even anticipated, the political and social need expressed by French society in education matters. With this context in mind, it might be appropriate to give a brief survey of the history of the magazine in response to the expectations of public opinion concerning the education system since its creation.

The magazine was founded in 1974. In the aftermath of 1968, journalists from Le Monde proposed and obtained approval for the creation of a monthly magazine to reflect the heated debates at the time about certain notions such as authority, the means of transmitting knowledge and certain themes like parent/child and teacher/student relationships. During the first phase of its existence, the monthly reflected and embodied debates of concern to an institution in full transformation, while at the same time trying to give clear guidance to both parents and students.

The creation of this journal also corresponded with the rise of mass education in the form of a uniform high school system, which was launched in 1974. All children from the same age cohort are 113

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supposed to continue their secondary studies, whereas previously, some students quite prematurely veered off towards vocational courses. Without any fundamental changes to its ground rules, the system absorbed a considerable flow of young people. In setting this new challenge to the education system, the government sought not only to meet the demand for qualified personnel on the job market by raising overall education levels, but also to democratize access to school. In 1981, one of the administrations issuing from the alternative government parties in the majority at the time, renewed this democratic ambition by assigning the education system a quantitative goal, which is still in force today: 80 per cent of young people in an age cohort should obtain a baccalauréat (i.e. high-school or school- leaving certificate). It also massively reinvested in universities, which previous conservative governments had largely abandoned.

However, with the long-term effects of the economic downturn, the French people’s perception of the education system underwent a significant change: education became ‘investment’ for which a ‘premium’ was expected. A consumerist approach replaced the usual blind trust that a large majority of French people placed in the school system. However, this consumerism is somewhat peculiar: France is renowned to have a private sector which enrolls about 15 per cent of its students, a percentage which has not changed for many years. It is not a question of families shopping for schools on the open market. Indeed, the French consumer approach is not through money, but more so through knowledge that an ‘initiated few’ may have of the educational system. Who would be better situated than the teachers themselves who would have such information on hand and know where to find it? That is why all surveys show that teachers are the most prominent social category among parents of students attending the grandes écoles, which educate the nation’s elite.

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This mindset among families constantly looking for the right school and the best courses was in some ways anticipated by Le Monde de l’éducation which had also adopted a consumerist approach. In the mid-80s, Le Monde de l’éducation was the first magazine to publish a list of France’s top secondary schools (the criteria being the percentage of successfully obtained baccalauréats) in a country where, theoretically, families cannot choose which school their children will attend. This editorial decision gave rise to a certain amount of criticism from the institutional side, which in the end, however, consented to draw up its own winners’ list for families.

This educational consumerism is still a reality and Le Monde de l’éducation is no longer a precursor. Education has currently become such a subject of concern for most French people that all the mainstream media, as well as magazines and popular newspapers, continue to publish lists of excellence and constantly query the shortcomings of the system. Within the system itself, this crisis of confidence has no doubt today affected even the teachers, who had never undergone such a sustained and fierce attack: their authority (a debate which has resurfaced dramatically in this country due to the increase in violence and incivility), but also their methods and competence. Moreover, while the Left Wing and the teaching establishment appeared to be close bedfellows twenty years ago (the ‘young Turks’ of the Confederation of Teachers’ Unions had majority support among teachers during the Socialist victory of 1981), the divorce is today nearly an accomplished fact between teachers’ unions and the Left, who are no longer trusted to ‘transform the school system’. Everyone, both families as well as professionals, today agree that the schools of the Republic are in a state of crisis. The opening up of the school system, which began in the sixties and reached its apogee in the eighties, still fails to reach full democratization. In other words, if French schools can today guarantee education for all of its

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children, it is not capable of guaranteeing their success. And this is where recurrent debates arise in France, concerning high school for everyone followed by massive failures during the initial university years.

From its vantage point, Le Monde de l’éducation has refocused on teachers. And this is where we are today: confronted with teachers who are searching for the meaning of their vocation, as well as appropriate tools, the magazine attempts to provide answers to both questions. Grounded in daily life, but not a slave to convention, Le Monde de l’éducation thoroughly reflects Le Monde’s editorial style, a touchstone for its general readership, and especially teachers, who comprise an important audience for the newspaper. Above all, with schools experiencing extraordinary social upheaval (violence is no doubt the most striking example), wherever possible, we try to treat all subjects that affect the education system and its efforts to absorb, resolve, or merely outlive them: a host of concerns which provide us with rich subject matter.

Given the impact of the educational question in our country, given also the fear of governments - no matter what their political leanings - faced with teachers’ strikes (which of the Government – when facing teachers’ strikes (that have caused several ministers to lose both their credibility and their mandate) the Minister of Education is obviously extremely attentive to anything that is said and published in this area. The Minister is also constantly hounded for information, since the theme of education today appears as much or even more in daily news items, as it does in specialized articles dedicated to education.

In purely educational issues, teachers’ unions, which are very powerful and well informed, represent for the press a source of information superior or at least equal to the public authorities. Consequently, journalists run a serious risk of fuelling a constant

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All the same, journalists are not always welcome in schools that are no doubt concerned about protecting both themselves and the students from intruders. Moreover, in France generally, public and secondary schools do not willingly open their doors to ‘outsiders’, whether journalists, parents or others. And before journalists can gain ingress, it is often necessary to obtain a sheaf of authorizations. Le Monde de l’éducation generally avoids these difficulties due to its solid reputation among teachers. The latter trust and allow us, doubtless more than they do other colleagues, to conduct our enquiries in schools and universities.

Communication is without question one of the major activities of the Ministry of Education. Some high-ranking officers of the institution refer to their Minister as the “Minister of image” of whom the smallest declaration can have effect of a decision. For instance, if the Minister of Education, through what he says, seems more open towards reinforcing a selection at the junior high school level, the teachers’ attitude at staff committees for student orientation will change even more effectively than if an administrative bill had been published.

Everyone knows that the governmental management of this enormous enterprise is largely a question of image and spin. Few weeks pass without a press conference, or an announcement, even if the rhythm can vary according to the minister (Jack Lang was in this respect a record holder in terms of press conferences, and the present

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Minister Luc Ferry seems to follow on the same path). Thus, the Ministry largely expects the press to serve as a mouthpiece for explaining the recurrent changes that affect the educational system to educational stakeholders (i.e. pupils, students, households, businesses, etc.). Because they know how defective are their internal communications (although the Internet now makes it possible to obtain a wealth of information), they also lean on the fourth estate to convey new decisions to their own personnel. However, the specialized educational press (of which we are, it is true, almost the sole representatives) is in no way privileged: for example, we are granted no private briefings. Here, too, what sets us apart is that more easily than others, we can get behind the scenes.

If I compare the mode of functioning of a specialized French journalist – regarding social issues, for instance, which was precisely my field – with the journalist who has his specialty in education, I would suggest that the difference is that in the latter case, news is treated in a more institutionalized manner, that is, the journalist is dependant on ministerial sources. This statement may seem curious, considering the lively, concrete and accessible nature of news coverings of school events. This is only true if the schools are open to the press, which is, as mentioned above, not always the case. A further aspect is that in France relations between the media and the Ministry of Education often take place in a context of mutual suspicion. This spirit often leads journalists – those of Le Monde de l’éducation as well as others – to seek other sources of information, in particular from unions. The opposite scenario is also true: teachers’ unions, when facing the powerful Ministry of Education, have established their own information network that often proves to be very effective. French teachers’ unions have often been accused of ‘co-management’: the Minister had practically abandoned the management of human resources to this body, and almost no reform

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The Ministry has attempted, during the last few years, to take back its responsibility in the domain of communication but journalists still consider the unions to be their major source of information.

Both union and ministerial pressures are important in France due to the centralization of the educational system. Territorial communities – cities, provinces, and regions – provide considerable funding for educational matters, but make very few decisions. Their influence on this field is practically absent, and they do not stand to be an interesting source of information.

The recently elected government (Spring 2002) envisages a new state of affairs by decentralizing certain functions attributed up until now to the State, which will necessarily modify both the weight and authority of the communities in terms of information. Also, concerning more implicitly the economical fibre, regions will more than likely sweep the enterprises with them in the decision-making game in the educational domain. If these projects go through, there is no doubt that the relations between the media and the representatives of the public authority will be profoundly transformed.

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Dileep Padgaonkar

Established in 1838, The Times of India is one of the oldest newspapers worldwide. Today it is published in nine Indian cities and sells a little over two million copies daily with a readership of approximately ten million. This makes it the world’s largest English- language broadsheet newspaper. The Times Group also publishes a business newspaper, a daily in both Hindi and Marathi, as well as two magazines, one devoted to women and the other to films.

All of these publications are available online; the online edition of The Times of India receives on a monthly average roughly sixty-five million page-views. Its scope is thus unrivalled, within India and across the globe, wherever you find Indian Diasporas.

These figures are indisputably impressive, but by no means justify immodesty. On the contrary, a distribution of ten million within a billion-strong population incites us to humility, even when considered in the context of the country’s English-speaking population. Our readership thus constitutes a small fraction of only a portion of the population.

Nevertheless, our readers belong to India’s elite. They are, as the phrase goes, ‘upwardly mobile’. The core of our readership emanates from the political establishment, bureaucracy, the business class, professional circles and the academic world. Changes introduced in the newspaper in recent years have specifically targeted readers in the eighteen to thirty-five years age group. The fact that advertisers also target this age group is not, of course, a fortuitous coincidence; the risks and rewards of a market-driven paper cannot be exaggerated.

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Education in the cultural context

Since memory, Indians have been urged to engage in four pursuits: the cultivation of virtue, the acquisition of wealth, the satisfaction of desires and spiritual emancipation. All of these activities must be rooted, however, in knowledge. But knowledge is not merely a matter of learning skills, mastering techniques or even of erudition. Rather it is construed as an apprenticeship for the realization of self. This is why education is accorded a place of pride in human endeavours. The teacher/guru enjoys a higher status than any other individual. That is the classical position.

The reality, however, is somewhat different. In their daily existence, most Indians are called upon to simultaneously propitiate the goddess of wealth (Lakshmi) and the goddess of learning (Saraswati). This is easier said than done for the two can, and often do, provoke a situation of conflict. To overcome this problem, Indians often turn to the elephant-headed god Ganesha. He symbolizes a synthesis of both Lakshmi and Saraswati. It is his name that a child is taught to write when beginning to learn the alphabet, and he is worshipped at the start of any enterprise, especially commercial.

In India today, the mediation of Lord Ganesha is needed more than ever before. The reason is fairly straightforward. In the educational field, as in the domain of the media, and indeed in other walks of life, the balance has tilted sharply in favour of the goddess of wealth to the detriment of the goddess of learning. In the media, for instance, there was a time when ideology – whether it was conservative, liberal or leftist – set the editorial agenda. The media was, or claimed to be, in the service of the State or of civil society, but with the end of the cold war, the market has replaced both. The newspaper is increasingly regarded as a ‘product’ or, better still, as a ‘brand’ and all those who work for it, including editors and journalists, have to be mindful of market share, quarterly results, the annual balance sheet, etc. 122

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In this context, journalism has acquired an increasingly consumerist focus, which has also influenced the coverage of education. Accent is currently put on scandals rather than on policy, on career opportunities rather than on values and on political turf battles rather than on dissemination of disinterested knowledge.

Below are some examples of ostensibly ‘educational’ issues that have hit the headlines in recent years.

• Several million dollars of assets – in cash and in kind – were seized from the head of the public service commission in Punjab; he had sold examination papers to job applicants. His ‘clients’ included children of personalities who had an influence on state affairs. • The head of an educational institution in Bihar was killed after he attempted to stop students from cheating during an examination. • Several private educational institutions have come under police surveillance when it was discovered that they sought hefty ‘donations’ to admit students.

The first case exposed the pervasive corruption of the system. The second revealed the progressive criminalization of the student community in some parts of India. (Indeed, leaders of student unions often condone this criminalization. Elections to such unions are fought with means and methods that rival those deployed in the political arena.) The third case illustrates the crass commercialism rampant in private educational institutions. Most of them are regarded as moneymaking rackets.

Politics has also played havoc within the educational system. This is evident in student and teacher unions. Both are engaged in pursuing sectional – and often populist – interests rather than in promoting higher standards of teaching and learning.

Several political initiatives have directly influenced the educational scene and their influence has been aired in the media. 123

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In the early years of independence, India had to contend with feverish debates on the medium of instruction in schools or colleges. Some opted for the regional language, others tilted in favour of Hindi, the official language, whereas still some others chose English. A balance had to be obtained and was found in the three-language formula. Its application, however, was left to the states, for under India’s federal system, states control education. The controversy is now by and large settled, after having debilitated the educational system for quite a long time. Many states that aggressively promoted instruction in the regional language have yet to recover from this debate. Some resisted the ‘domination’ of Hindi, which is spoken in the populous states of the north. Others had resisted English, the language of the colonial masters. Both kinds of resistance were meant to safeguard regional identity. As it turned out, the fear of its erosion proved to be largely misplaced. Most states that refused to teach English to students in good time find themselves facing economic backwardness.

Heated, not to speak of violent, controversy was also generated when a particular government at the Centre extended the policy of reservations – or positive discrimination – to include the alleged backward classes. Until then this policy was only intended for the erstwhile untouchables (Dalits) and tribals. Fears were expressed to the effect that children of the upper castes would not obtain admission into educational institutions and government jobs, on the basis of merit, and that educational standards would therefore decline. This controversy, though largely settled, still rears its head from time to time.

With the arrival of a coalition government at the Centre, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a right-wing Hindu formation, ideological debate became the order of the day within the media,

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International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep The specialized press in India and its attitude to educational issues parliament and other public fora. The debate focused on the following issues:

• revision of history textbooks, which the BJP said reflected a Marxist perspective; • revision of other social science textbooks; • introduction of astrology as an academic discipline; • promotion of Sanskrit in institutes of higher learning, including institutes of technology; • increase the emphasis placed on ‘indigenous’ disciplines in mathematics, physics and other medical systems.

At the heart of this discussion was a larger debate on the correct definition of secularism as state policy. Left-wing and liberal parties had largely abandoned religion to the private domain, but they upheld special rights for minorities, guaranteed in the constitution. The BJP, however, considered this attitude to be ‘pandering to minorities’ to build vote banks, and promoted instead a brand of ‘majoritarian’ secularism i.e. one that reflects the cultural ethos of the Hindu majority. This debate still rages on in India.

In addition to these debates, the media’s coverage of education has consistently focused on several issues mentioned below:

• the success of Indian institutes of technology and management in producing high-caliber graduates who rose to prominence during the boom of information technology; • the tempting of Indian students by universities from Australia, France, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, the USA and the UK; • the lack of educational infrastructure, especially in rural primary schools; • crowded classrooms; • a heavy learning load, particularly on young students;

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• examination stress; • toppers in high-school exams; • rating of schools and colleges; • violence on campus.

The coverage of these issues has involved fairly extensive interaction between the Ministry of Education and the media, taking the following forms:

• information officers attached to the Ministry are in daily contact with the beat correspondent; • information officers provide press releases on the activities of the Ministry and arrange briefings with the concerned bureaucrats; • the Minister is often interviewed on TV and in newspapers; • heads of various educational/research institutes speak to the press; • the Ministry – at the centre and in the states – organizes tours for journalists to see for themselves how various educational schemes are implemented at the basic level; • newspapers such as The Times of India organize debates with students, teachers and principals on issues of concern to them.

Conclusion

The Indian educational system, like its democracy, is flawed. Both, however, elicit an extraordinary interest and adhesion from the Indian people. They recognize the value of the vote to dispose of non- performing governments, and they regard education as an investment that conveys very high returns. This view of education has gained in intensity after the success of Indians in the IT sector, which, in the eyes of Indians, is largely due to the blessings of Lord Ganesha. His vehicle of transport as he travels in time and space just happens to be … a mouse.

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International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep The specialized press in India and its attitude to educational issues In response to the presentation of Dileep Padgaonkar, Trevor Cook

In England and the United Kingdom the press gives education high priority. Arguably, it takes second place only to health issues or some aspects of crime and immigration. Over the last twenty years as the public debate on education standards has intensified and central government has taken responsibility for making improvements, the media has focused even more intently on what is going on and has to some extent driven the pace of change. A cynic might say that now there is someone or something to blame when things seem to go wrong – the Minister or the Government – the general press finds education more and more appealing.

The number of education correspondents employed by the general press gives a clear measure of the priority that is given to education:

• every national newspaper – ‘serious’ or tabloid – has an education correspondent; a significant number have two; • the BBC has three national education correspondents and a network of around ten regional education correspondents; • at a local and regional level many newspapers have a journalist whose remit includes education; • each of the mainstream ‘serious’ newspapers produces a weekly education supplement of at least two pages.

■ How is the media’s education agenda set?

In England the media’s education agenda is, to a significant extent, set by the Education Ministry. However, it is shaped by the media’s particular interests – currently school standards and the supply and quality of teachers.

Through careful strategic planning the Ministry provides a steady stream of announcements to keep journalists busy. The fact that they

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are lazy plays into our hands. If you are prepared to spoon-feed them they won’t, on the whole, go looking elsewhere for their stories.

Spoon-feeding is not, of course, achieved without hard work. We put a great deal of effort into identifying the major strands of work on which we want to concentrate our efforts. By deciding what we want to have achieved on each of these strands in the coming months and years we are able to construct a framework of activity that will deliver our goals.

The framework does not, however, provide sufficient material to keep the journalists occupied all the time. Additional one-off events and announcements are needed to fill in the gaps. These come from two sources: firstly, those that arise from the Ministry’s day-to-day work and secondly, incidents that occur beyond the Ministry that provide a hook on which to hang media activity.

In this latter category falls the case of Mrs Amos. After years of trying to get Mrs. Amos to send her daughters to school regularly, the local council took legal action against her in May 2002. She was found guilty and sentenced to sixty days in prison.

As far as anyone could remember this was the first time such a thing had happened. Although not a party to the case, it provided the Ministry with a great opportunity to focus media attention on the problems associated with truancy and the long-term damage it can do. The Ministry was helped by the reaction of Mrs Amos and her children. The children returned to full-time schooling and on her release Mrs Amos told the media that while the punishment was harsh it had brought her to her senses.

The media coverage of the case – and the rather unusual reaction of the Minister welcoming the outcome of the case (they usually

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International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep The specialized press in India and its attitude to educational issues decline to comment on individual cases) have helped to highlight truancy as an issue. Parents of long-term truants across the country have been contacting their local councils for advice on getting their children back to school.

Successful though we are as a Press Office, we would not claim to have a complete monopoly on the agenda. Inevitably, stories will break over which the Ministry has no control. On those occasions it is essential to have the machinery in place to handle the issues.

We do this by running a News Desk to handle all incoming calls from journalists. The News Desk has specific targets. The most essential are that substantive answers to journalists’ queries should be given within two hours – and that includes statements from Ministers - and where substantive answers will not be available in two hours, a holding reply must be given within an hour along with a clear indication of when a substantive answer can be expected.

It would be foolish to claim that targets are always met. But staff are extremely aware of them and the available evidence indicates that they are met in the majority of cases.

Well-planned announcements and quick, effective responses to enquiries have enabled our press office to gain real credibility with journalists. We have developed a relationship with journalists based on professional respect and good will. This does not mean that journalists disengage their critical facilities when dealing with us but that we can have sensible open conversations that ensure that our views are properly reflected in media coverage.

■ The 24-hour news cycle

The 24-hour news cycle brings challenges when dealing with a high profile story, which is not the Ministry’s to control. The story 129

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will change over the hours as journalists look for and find new angles to pursue. For the Ministry an effective news management system is essential. As the story begins to unfold it is essential to keep up with developments so that questions can be dealt with quickly. A team of press officers and officials with in-depth policy knowledge need to be brought together to ensure continuity and consistency of response. Formalized arrangements are needed to ensure that when the Ministry is closed overnight a duty press officer is available to journalists armed with all the information and equipment they need to provide an out-of-hours service that is of little or no difference to the service available when the Ministry is open.

It is all very well to react quickly when a story breaks and have a ministerial quote at the end of the story, but most readers won’t ever reach that point. The important thing, wherever possible, is to influence the tone of the whole story.

This can only be achieved if the press office develops the networks and intelligence gathering ability needed to spot a story coming over the horizon. This gives time to prepare briefing material and approach journalists proactively to take them through issues and explain the Ministry’s point of view.

Again, it would be foolish to suggest that the Education Press Office in London is achieving this level of performance on a regular basis but the approach can and does work. And we are working hard to improve the strike rate.

In terms of Ministry announcements, the 24-hour news cycle presents a different range of challenges. Communication strategies need to be far more sophisticated than in the past. Not so long ago all that was needed was a press notice and perhaps a press conference to satisfy the needs of the written press and of broadcasters with their morning and evening news bulletins.

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Today a strategy is needed that sets the scene on the early morning radio and television, is completed in both the morning and the evening (in news and picture terms) to refresh news bulletins, gives a new angle at lunchtimes and achieves good coverage in the written press the following morning.

■ Ministry information services

In the United Kingdom Ministry, the information service is non- political. Its role is to present and explain government policy through ‘free’ and paid activity (advertising and marketing).

The ‘free’ service is provided by the press office through its programme of announcements and responses to breaking news stories. Increasingly, to this ‘free’ service can be added the Internet. The Internet, for the first time, gives education ministries the opportunity to communicate directly with its customers – students, parents, pupils, teachers, etc. without being filtered by journalists. Communication strategies are using this tool more and more effectively. In England, for instance, the Ministry’s Press Notice website receives up to 2,000 hits a day.

Beyond the Ministry there is a whole education industry with its experts and pundits desperate to speak to the media. Universities and associated research organizations are a constant source of information as are teachers’ unions and associations, other governmental organizations (such as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the Office for Standards in Education and the Teacher Training Agency), local authorities and political parties.

To make sure that these other sources of information take second place to the Ministry, particular care must be taken to cultivate the leading education journalists. To a greater or lesser extent, where they go their colleagues will follow.

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The best way to develop close working relations is to keep journalists well informed about what is going on. By briefing them on upcoming announcements for the next week or two they are able to plan and start gathering supporting information on which to build their stories when announcements are made. On certain key stories a limited number of journalists may be given pre-briefing so that they publish a story that coincides with rather than follows the announcement. The pre-briefed journalists are happy because they are ahead of the game and the Ministry is happy because – if the briefing has been done properly – the story that appears early gives a taste of the main announcement and encourages other journalists to pick up and run with the story. The risk with this is, of course, that the pre-briefing reveals too much of the story and stops other journalists from following it up.

Despite the closeness of this working relationship, journalists have no difficulty in maintaining a critical distance. They certainly will not accept propaganda from the Ministry and proprietors of publications; television and radio stations guard their editorial independence jealously.

■ Staffing a ministry press office

Clearly, the quality of the staff in a press office is crucial. Without staff skilled in communication and with a good knowledge of the needs of all branches of the media, the Ministry will struggle to make an impact.

Some take the view that a ministry press office will only operate effectively if staffed by former journalists. In some countries this would just not be possible and experience in the United Kingdom suggests it is not desirable either.

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What is needed are individuals who have an aptitude for communication, policy developments and, increasingly, strategic planning. Some will be former journalists, some will not.

In the United Kingdom, the Government Information and Communication Service (GICS) recruits the ministry press officers on the basis of a rigorous competency-based system. Applicants who go through the system successfully are then available for employment by individual ministries. Once in post – they usually join as information officers. Individuals go through training tailored to their individual needs and the press office needs of the ministry they serve. With experience they move on to become senior information officers where they take on management responsibilities and then chief press officers with responsibility for teams of ten or more press officers. Beyond this, successful operators join the ranks of the Senior Civil Service where they become increasingly involved in advising ministers and policy development.

Further information on GICS, its recruitment and working practices can be found at: www.gics.gov.uk.

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International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep PART VII. TELEVISION

Cyril Auffret

Introduction

At TF1, as at all the general-interest television stations, the newscast is far from being the only place where education is discussed, but it is the only one where those who speak of it are specialized journalists. Talk shows and magazine programmes such as ‘Sans aucun doute’ (TF1), ‘Ca se discute’ (F2) and ‘Ca me révolte’ (M6), consider education to be a fashionable topic, and address it at times from more a sensationalist than educational standpoint.

The TF1 news staff produces two daily newscasts (1 p.m. and 8 p.m.) that attract an average of six and eight million viewers respectively.

The audience is ‘the target’

■ The topic is attractive

Education is an ‘attractive’ topic in French society, as is everything relating to children. All are former schoolchildren or university students, and many are parents or future parents of schoolchildren or university students, and may have an opinion on a subject that relates to schools (e.g. the heated debate over school hours and the school year, or the current and somewhat surrealistic debate over the content of philosophy curriculum in the final year of secondary school).

This general environment explains why education receives very extensive coverage through a general-interest mass medium such as

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TF1, which devotes 450 to 500 items each year to education (broadly defined). Thus, hardly a day passes without a newscast mentioning schools.

An analysis of audience curves shows that stories on education unify. When major events occur (baccalauréat, back-to-school time, political demonstrations etc.), they are often the lead item in broadcasts.

■ Resources

At TF1, three journalists are in charge of the education section, with occasional backup (e.g. for coverage of the baccalauréat and back-to-school time). This number has been rising steadily: six years ago only one journalist was attached to this branch.

These journalists work under the society department, and it is from this angle that education is viewed at TF1. This explains the station’s journalistic approach, which strives for scrupulous accuracy but is directed to the general public, as opposed to that of a specialized journal.

■ Demand from the news programmes

Stories on education are in great demand for news broadcasts. The topic is perfectly in keeping with the atmosphere that we wish to establish, namely closeness to viewers. Stories must provide concrete, simple answers (jargon such as ‘éducnat’ for ‘éducation nationale’ is forbidden) to questions put forth by parents (our target audience) and grandparents (the 1 p.m. newscast on Wednesdays4). They must also relate to something ‘in the headlines’.

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School-age children very rarely watch television news reports, and TF1 is not the favourite channel of teachers. Thus, one might say that our journalistic approach is parent-oriented – a target that is obviously of interest both to the Ministry, but also to teachers’ unions and parent-teacher associations.

There is enormous pressure on schools today, and hence on the media: parents, obsessed with their child’s success, have a consumerist approach to knowledge that makes them both extremely demanding and critical of the school system. The Ministry, for its part, is torn between divergent and conflicting interests (professional bodies, parents, politicians), and would like to be able to count on the media.

What topics are covered, and how?

■ Major events on the calendar of national education

A few unavoidable milestones punctuate the school year: the baccalauréat and back-to-school time are major events in France (about fifty news items each). They are reference points for our society.

Back-to-school time is synonymous with the end of holidays and summer and sign of a sense of renewal. It is a transition period for the entire society. The baccalauréat (bac) is a rite of passage that maintains the meritocracy of the republic.

Apart from inevitable clichés (tears at nursery school or on receipt of bac results), these events give us the opportunity to show what is changing (a new branch or diploma, a novel teaching approach, new forms of testing etc.), as well as to address topics that hold no current interest apart from their longevity. Where else could we hear of the

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merits of a BEP (vocational certificate) in woodworking or a vocational bac in artistic trades, with the option ‘costume designer’?

The news broadcasts have one major concern: getting away from descriptive, boring topics in favour of human-interest stories. Instead of an illustrated commentary, they want to show people who are in learning situations and talk about them (e.g. resourceful pupils, or sciences in the school system).

■ Institutional matters

This is the most difficult subject for us to handle and ‘sell’. What can be more boring, and on the face of it less suited for television, than the submission of a report to the Ministry or the announcement of a technical reform in school programmes. ‘Box’ stories that illustrate these matters by the use of quantitative tables, curves and drawings, must be kept rare and short (fifty seconds).

Therefore, the difficulty that faces us is to find the ‘story’, the real- life situation that can illustrate and convey the information.

Generally speaking, we provide little or no coverage of the substantive debates that shake the education community, unless they come to public attention and have a direct impact on the lives of schoolchildren – for instance, teachers’ refusal to correct the bac will be preferred to the reform of the philosophy curriculum.

It is also in this manner that we take the parent’s side – for example: if the TPE (Practical Work in Teaching) is transformed, the journalist team finds the subject interesting, prospects and covers the item through a pilot institution.

This is probably the main point of friction between the Ministry of Education and the media. The Ministry believes that the media do

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International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Television not devote sufficient coverage to its educational policy. We try, for our part, to be selective, by covering the real reforms, preferring to ignore mere statements that have no real impact on society (e.g. the establishment of the umpteenth commission to deliberate on ways of dealing with violence in lower secondary schools).

■ Crosscutting stories

Crosscutting stories cover broad social movements that pass necessarily through the school system at one time or another. The scholastic context often gives them special significance. These stories keep us very busy: violence in schools, the euro, the Internet, child abuse, the precautionary principle, etc.

The most representative of these subjects is violence, which is typical of controversy with the Ministry, even though founded on a misunderstanding: government representatives assume that the media are muckraking, whereas we believe that the Ministry wants to conceal the difficult reality of certain schools.

It is true that the media film events such as outbreaks of violence (attacks on teachers, turning-points, etc.), but we also offer ‘positive’ items on initiatives taken by teaching staff and novel experiments initiated to reduce violence. We take the same approach to child molestation.

By way of example: among over sixty stories on violence in schools within a year, about 60 per cent will be factual though negative items and 40 per cent will be ‘positive’. We try to strike a balance, to avoid giving the impression that nothing is accomplished. These positive stories are often very hard to find, and it often happens that the Ministry or the Minister learns of a given initiative from the media.

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Relations with the Ministry

■ The press relations department

As you can see, the problem is learning what is happening in one school among thousands and sending information up the line. The Ministry’s press relations department is of assistance in our search for news. We try to maintain excellent relations with the Ministry (frequent contacts, lunches with the Minister, etc.). This allows us to activate urgent situations, such as obtaining express permission to film a hot story. Our problem is maintaining both a certain distance and a critical eye. The nature of our relations depends a great deal on the minister: for instance, contact was practically inexistent with Allègre, and quite relaxed with Lang.

Up to fifty people work in the public relations department of the Ministry of Education, including approximately fifteen press officers and the Minister’s communication advisors. These numbers are considerably higher than those for the Ministry for Economy and Finance, for example. Each education office also has a public relations officer, as do some school inspectorates: communication is obviously one of the Ministry’s major concerns. Too many contacts, however, do not facilitate relations.

■ Where is the difficulty?

Those charged with communication at the Ministry are there to sell a policy, while the media exist to inform the public not only of governmental policies, but also of malfunctions of the education system. We expect the communicators to have a thorough knowledge of the system and of the real conditions in the field – which is not always the case – and to understand media operational requirements: responsiveness, legal problems, travel. It being apparent that they

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Our approach was to help them realize, for example, that there is no point in sending us to an exemplary school. We won’t be fooled and this procedure may purely and simply kill the story. It is possible to treat a difficult situation intelligently, however, on the condition that we speak without reserve and that we can work together with confidence.

Our approach is still one of partnership, we make an effort to put certain difficult messages across, but we intend to work without restrictions on problematic subjects – covering illiteracy and criticizing literacy programmes in four minutes is neither understood nor easily accepted by the Ministry.

Trade unions and associations

■ Teachers’ unions

Our relations with teachers’ unions are more distant: fax, union periodicals, telephone contacts, etc. We use them as information sources during periods of conflict, when the Ministry is less forthcoming. They provide us with contacts and personalities, who are sometimes caricatures (e.g. a militant school nurse).

They are somewhat naturally wary of us, and they try to take advantage of the relationship they may have with us. We remain therefore receptive but on our guard.

■ Parent-teacher federations

We have good relations with parent-teacher federations, but collaboration remains difficult, as there are strong divisions even

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within each organization. We prefer to address parents directly in the field.

Filming in a school

When preparing a story within a school, we journalists are perceived with a feeling of mistrust. Teachers consider television to be a diabolical instrument (that corrupts their pupils) that they neither understand nor control. As far as they are concerned, we are rivals. What’s more, television is not always part of their culture, whereas it is very much part of the life of their pupils.

Moreover, TF1 is a private ‘for profit’ station, whose values they consider as diametrically opposed to those of a public service. We therefore have to work hard to inform and explain our objectives before we even begin to ‘turn’ a film in a school, often meeting previously the principal or headteacher.

Schools are still a sanctuary in France: parents were not allowed in schools until very recently (and even still, not everyone agrees), so one can imagine the type of welcome a journalist may receive.

It is a paradox to note that teachers, who are always quick to be mobilized and clam ‘their rights’, are in contrast very respectful of the hierarchical chain of command within the education system. I call this phenomenon the ‘good pupil syndrome’. It is absolutely impossible for us to bypass the chain of command and ‘shoot’ eventually a film without authorization, even during a conflict. This lack of autonomy within schools in their relations with the media and the eternal buck-passing are certainly arduous for journalists.

A final pitfall, which is increasingly unavoidable when covering a story, is the protection of minors. In theory, we are not allowed to

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International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep Television broadcast the image of a minor without parental permission. It is impossible to comply with this requirement in a school of 1,000 pupils. Do minors have a right to self-expression? The Universal Declaration of Children’s Rights, of which France is signatory, affirms that they do. We adapt the law, therefore, to the real conditions in which we work and take legal risks, by making a distinction between particularly sensitive subjects (violence, sexual education etc.) and those that are more neutral (e.g. back-to-school time). We do not know, however, for how long we will be able to proceed in this manner. The French are becoming increasingly litigious.

In response to the presentation of Cyril Auffret, Stella Hughes

Television and radio have a unique ability to reflect and project people’s personal experiences of education through human-interest stories. Broadcast media can take their audience into the home and classroom, or onto the street and campus to reveal what those directly involved in educational issues do, think and feel.

This ability to tap directly into micro-level public opinion matches the public mood as far as education is concerned: worldwide, the message about the importance of education for personal success has registered, the demand for education has never been stronger and people generally are intensely interested in education at an individualistic, consumer level.

This intense interest is expressed in a strong demand for news and information, often transmitted through informal channels or ‘traditional media’, i.e. local networks, the grapevine and rumour. Examples of this are the neighbourhood ratings that are attributed to one or another local school or even specific teachers and passed on from one parent to another; or the sudden rush in recent years in France of school-leavers to register in huge numbers for a particular 143

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degree course – psychology, architecture, sport – on the basis of informal information networks.

The demand for education news at this micro-consumer level is also reflected in the avid consumption of a certain type of media information: for example, there is a marked rise in sales when print media publish league tables. On TV and radio, the popularity of regular education stories such as ‘back-to-school’ or ‘exam results’ also reflect the important role education has in many people’s daily lives.

The challenge for the broadcast media that so easily capture audience interest in real-life stories is to find ways to link this individualistic concern about educational issues to a better understanding of education in general – thus fostering the ideal ‘informed public’ of a healthy democracy.

Linking micro-level experiences to macro-level issues, showing the public how its own experience is affected by policies, trends and various impinging realities is important in any society. For those countries facing major educational challenges and crises – the struggle to achieve EFA, fundamental reform of higher education, HIV/ AIDS, etc. – the need to reach, inform and win public opinion becomes critical.

But not all of this is the media’s job. It is first and foremost for public authorities – ministries of education, local education authorities, schools and institutions – to be active communicators and install a culture of openness, debate and exchange of information with all stakeholders: teachers, students, parents, unions, associations, parliamentarians … and the media. A Ministry of Education is more likely to have a successful relationship with the media if it also ensures that the education establishment engages in open dialogue with all these other partners.

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Ministries of education need to understand the media and the needs of the media. They also need to be strategic in their approach to journalists. Media gatekeepers – editors and senior journalists who make the editorial decisions – require a different approach to general reporters and specialized journalists. What is problematic for authorities is how to encourage the media to cover education as fully as it deserves, as well as the fact that the gatekeepers largely determine the approach and the scale of education coverage.

UNESCO recently launched a collaborative process with media specialists in training and in education to both to determine a strategy and its contents for an EFA Media Training and Resource Kit, which will now be developed.

A key element of the strategy is apparent in the title of the kit: provision of training must go hand in hand with access to resources. While it is not the job of ministries of education to train journalists, it certainly is their responsibility to provide access to resources – data, statistics, charts, reports and documents that can be useful to journalists in their coverage of educational matters.

A second key proposal on resources is to ensure that the best use is made of networks and that EFA international partners consult the EFA website and the available lists of related distribution, that they may play an active role in providing up-to-date information of quality on EFA that can generate news coverage.

An education-training course must aim to develop the interest, knowledge and skills of the journalists participating. EFA media training can draw on the substantial body of high-quality media training that already exists, which is based on issues, for example in the area of HIV/AIDS media coverage.

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Once journalists have been trained to identify and remain alert to the issues that are behind education stories, the opportunities for education coverage multiply. Such issues include human rights and education, access to education, education and employment, education and HIV/AIDS, ICTs and education, languages, culture and education, poverty and education.

Training in education issues needs to be backed up with a strong grounding in the basics of education systems and structures, policies and programmes. As statistics have particular significance in education and often form the core of news stories, a training component on analysis and reporting of statistics is also essential to an education media-training course.

It is clear that journalists are not the only ones who need to be alert to all issues linked to education, to know how to handle figures or grasp systemic reform matters. Education media training should also target communication staff of education ministries, parliamentarians and other key players, so that the general level of media awareness and know-how is as high as possible.

A high level of stakeholder mobilization and support is a key to the success of education policies and the attainment of goals. Achieving this has to be one of the central aims of any education ministry, which will almost inevitably look to the media as the instrument of this mobilization. However, the media’s role is to report, scrutinize, question and criticize an issue, to offer information and insight and to create a space for public debate. The best way to ensure that the media also supports and mobilizes is for the ministry of education to foster debate, exchange, openness and inclusion of all concerned. A ministry that communicates offers the optimal environment for the media to play its own role of communication.

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International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep PART VIII. COMMUNICATION FOR EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA PROGRAMME (COMED) – BUILDING SYSTEMS AND CAPACITIES TO PROMOTE MEDIA PARTICIPATION IN EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT

Akintola Fatoyinbo

Introduction

The press has always been considered as a key player in public policy in most societies. As part of its self-appointed mandates to inform, educate and entertain, the mass media play a special role in promoting public discourse on social issues. Even in countries where they are not generally accessible to a large majority, the media have considerable influence on what people think and do. Mamadou Ndoye highlights this in his discussion of Senegal’s experience in education (see Part II). When people, including policy-makers, speak of using communication to promote education and development, they generally have the press in mind. But why has the press, particularly in Africa, not performed a positive role in promoting education and development? What are the limitations?

The African media landscape

The mass media system in Africa has undergone some tremendous and generally positive changes in the last decade. I would like to highlight two positive developments.

The first is that the democracy movement of the early 1990s has broken the age-old monopoly of the modern mass media by

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government. In virtually every African country, private newspapers are flourishing. Ten years ago, in most French-speaking countries in West Africa, there was usually just one national daily newspaper, invariably government-owned, with a few private-sponsored newspapers struggling to survive as weeklies, biweeklies and monthlies. Today, in a city like Cotonou in Benin, there are over twelve daily newspapers, all but one are privately owned, and almost every year a new title appears on the newsstand. The situation is similar in virtually every African country.

But the strongest government monopoly on the media to have been broken in the last decade is that of the radio. Radio and television broadcasting has always been seen by official authorities as their cherished media institution where they cannot permit private operators. Today, in almost every country in Africa private radio stations proliferate, most of them broadcasting on the frequency modulation (FM) channels, and with relatively low output and coverage area.

Similar developments, though not so pronounced, have taken place with television, with the privatization of ownership and the proliferation of cable and satellite television broadcasting or relay stations.

The second positive development in recent years is the improvement in the qualifications of journalists entering the profession. In the past, journalism was seen as the domain of people who cannot find a job elsewhere, or academic dropouts and so-called ‘ne’er do wells’. Today, most new recruits in the profession in African societies have a university degree.

The key question however, is whether the democratization of the media landscape and improvement of the academic level of staff have led to parallel improvements in quality of production and service to

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Why?

The African modern mass media system, despite its growth, faces age-old problems of ownership structure, a weak financial base, low quality of staff particularly of journalists, lack of access to information, conflict with authorities, etc.

The focus of many of the newspapers is still unfortunately overwhelmingly political and personality oriented, and less preoccupied by issues of development. The screaming headlines on the front pages highlight corruption, political quarrelling, scandals or family crises of personalities, etc.

Except in a few countries, e.g. South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Senegal, there is little or no specialization. Individual journalists cover multiple and evermore complex issues from one day to the next. Their difficulty results in (i) superficial reporting and (ii) what I call the creation of a vicious circle that is characterized by disdain, if not disrespect for journalists on the part of the authorities, who provide no access to information. The reporters, on their part, continue to write ‘the Minister said’ articles with no depth, little substance and misunderstanding of context. This angers the officials even more, and they continue to refuse access - “… you will not understand anyway” – and the vicious circle perpetuates itself.

Four ways to break the vicious circle

• Specialization • Training

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• Continuous self-education by journalists • Creation of public information and communication units in ministries and institutions.

■ Specialization

Media houses need to establish specialized desks that cover economics, finance, health, environment, energy, education, etc. Editors often argue that they do not have enough staff, but they have no choice. Editors must identify areas which are of individual interest to their journalists and promote them. They can cover all areas, but they also need to specialize, and to do so without creating what in some countries are known as journalistic cartels – which act together to block publication of news from sources they do not appreciate, or have not ‘treated’ well.

■ Training

Media houses need to organize training seminars – both in-house and external. Journalists and their editors must create specialized desks and networks and request both national and external institutions to sponsor seminars and training programmes.

■ Continuous self-education

It is imperative for journalists to read, read and read again. They must register with specialized news and development agencies for bulletins, press releases and publications. They need to use the Internet - which understands that they are computer literate. Many African journalists still handwrite their articles and submit to an editorial secretary for editing. It is my pleasure to warn them that their days in the profession are numbered if they do not become computerized.

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■ Government/institutional communicators

The fourth element is the development of government and institutional communication systems. All ministries and government departments need information and communication units – in the same way that the private sector has corporate affairs departments. These units serve as intermediaries between media and authorities; they provide information to the media and organize regular encounters with ministers and senior officials. They help build trust in and competence of the media and also within the ministry in its relationship with the press; they plan communication and outreach campaigns for public policy dialogue and consensus building.

If the four above-mentioned steps are followed consistently, the ‘vicious circle’ can be broken.

The Communication for Education and Development programme (COMED), which I manage, was designed to turn the vicious circle into a virtuous one.

The COMED programme

Education in Africa faces numerous challenges in the 21st century. Efforts such as Education for All, broadening access, improving quality, or building the capacities and resources to do so will require the participation of, and dialogue between, the various actors and partners in education. Communication – i.e. sharing of information, building trust and confidence, sustaining goodwill and reinforcing co-operation – is significantly crucial to support partnerships that promote educational development. However, how to communicate?

In 1998, the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) and the World Bank, with financial support from the

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Norwegian Education Trust Fund, and in collaboration with the West African News Media and Development Centre (WANAD), launched a new initiative to tackle this question and to promote the use of communication in support of education. The initiative endeavors to develop ministerial capacities for communication and outreach as well as to improve media understanding of education issues. This programme is known as the Communication for Education and Development in Africa programme (COMED).

■ Programme objectives

• Strengthen the capacity of communication units in ministries of education in African countries to plan and execute effective public information and communication strategies and campaigns to promote national dialogue and consensus for education policies and programmes. • Develop a network of trained journalists within the African media reporting on issues of education and development. • Enhance the exchange and distribution of news and information among African education journalists, communication officers in education ministries and other relevant stakeholders through establishing a computer-based communication system. • Provide a clearinghouse of information on issues of communication for education and sustainable development in Africa.

Activities during Phase 1

Actions have been undertaken in three areas: (i) consultation with policy-makers, (ii) capacity-building and reinforcement geared to ministries of education and the media and (iii) the creation of regional and national networks for communicators and journalists specialized in education.

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Under the pilot phase of the programme, a series of sub-regional and national training workshops has been held in which over 150 journalists and communication officers of ministries of education participated from thirty African countries. These training workshops were held in Cotonou, for West Africa, (13 to 18 September 1999); in Harare for East and Southern Africa, (16 to 26 February 2000); and in Yaounde, for Central Africa and the Indian Ocean, (28 June to 7 July 2000). A special meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe on 17 March 1999 was destined to: (i) engage African Ministers of Education in a discussion on the role of communication, how it is used today and the potential it holds for the promotion of education in their countries, (ii) inform Ministers of the outcomes of earlier COMED experts’ consultations and (iii) obtain the Ministers’ input on the capacity-building programme developed by the experts. The meeting was organized in close coordination with the OAU Conference on the Decade of Education (COMEDAF 1) that took place in Harare, 18 to 19 March 1999.

Other activities undertaken under COMED during the first phase included: (i) a ‘pilot’ national training workshop in Dakar, Senegal in April 2000 for Senegalese education journalists and communicators, (ii) the sponsorship of journalists to attend events related to education, including the ADEA Biennial Meeting and the EFA Sub- Saharan Africa Conference in Johannesburg, December 1999, the World Education Forum in Dakar in April 2000, the Zimbabwe International Book Fair in August 2000 and the ADEA Biennial in Arusha, Tanzania in October 2001, (iii) a sub-regional training course in the use of educational statistics for journalists from some francophone West African countries, in Dakar, in June 2001, (iv) technical assistance to the parliament of Benin during the national consultations and prior to the introduction of legislation on educational reform in 2001, (v) assistance to the Fédération africaine

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des associations des parents d’élèves (FAPE) in planning a communication strategy and programme for its network, (vi) the Nigerian national training workshop in Abuja, 3 to 9 February 2002, which provided the first opportunity to field-test the six-module COMED curriculum and (vii) the Liberian national training workshop in Monrovia in June 2002.

■ The Africa education journalism award

The Africa Education Journalism Award was launched by ADEA as a special activity of the COMED programme in October 2001 in Arusha during the Biennial Meeting. The Award underscores the paramount importance of public communication for the development of efficient education systems in Africa. It seeks to encourage the production of quality articles on education written by African journalists and published in the African press.

A jury composed of four renowned education specialists and four experienced journalists announced the winners of the first edition of the award on 31 May in Cotonou. They scrutinized approximately thirty articles pre-selected from 260 entries from twenty countries. The prizewinners this year came from Benin and Rwanda for articles written in French, and from Nigeria and Uganda for work in English.

All awardees will be invited with the chief editors of their publications to undertake a study visit to Paris, London and Washington, D.C. The visit will include a training seminar in Paris at the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) and will focus on a topical education issue. Arrangements are also being made for the journalists to visit major media houses in Paris and London that have education sections. In addition, the first prizewinner in each language will receive a cash award of 2,000 euros, while second place winners will receive 1,000 euros.

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Our hope is that the quality of the awards this year will generate greater enthusiasm among African journalists to participate in future editions. Since the entries must be in-depth articles already published in newspapers, the competition can only lead to a greater coverage of education issues in the African press.

The African Education Journalism Award is also expected to serve eventually as one of the major indicators of the impact of COMED training workshops on the quality of education journalists in Africa. A systematic analysis might, over time, demonstrate a noticeable improvement in the articles published by journalists who participate in the sub-regional and national workshops.

■ Objectives of training workshops

The main objectives of the various COMED training workshops are threefold: firstly, to enhance the professional skills of both groups of participants - journalists and information/communication officers of ministries of education; secondly, to encourage the development of working relationships between journalists and ministerial communication officers; and thirdly, to encourage the creation of regional networks of education communicators.

A needs’ assessment in September 1998 had indicated that education managers and communication officers in ministries of education were distrustful of journalists and of media reports on education, which they considered generally to be sensationalist. On their part, journalists considered Education Ministry officials difficult to access and fond of hoarding information of public interest. They felt Ministry communication officers put up barriers and that especially they shielded ministers and top officials from the press.

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In view of this atmosphere of mutual suspicion, frustration and hostility, COMED decided to train journalists and communication officers simultaneously, in order to increase their mutual understanding and to build trust.

■ Training curriculum and methodology

A curriculum was specially designed by leading African communication experts and journalists for the COMED training seminars. The seminar programme is organized into six modules that total forty-two hours of intensive work, broken into three parts.

Part I consists of two modules, arranged over two days, and attended jointly by communication officers and journalists. During the two days, expert speakers focus on issues, concepts and experiences in education policy and programmes, and on a detailed description of the various partners in education and of the role they play. A presentation is also made on the role of communication in education and development, with a detailed analysis of the respective roles of journalists and ministerial communication officers in promoting dialogue and consensus on education policies and programmes.

In Part II of the workshop programme, participants are separated according to two professional groups: communication officers and journalists. Three modules for ministerial communicators focus with greater depth on the concept of communication for development and on its issues, strategy design and management. Emphasis is also placed on skills that are necessary for an institutional communicator, particularly for the design and execution of a media campaign, behaviour change communication, the production of bulletins and information materials.

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The three separate sessions for journalists deal, also in greater depth, with issues of education in Africa in general, and in particular in the specific country where the seminar is held. Education specialists are brought in to discuss the linkage between education, economic development and poverty reduction, and the prerequisites for an efficient education system. Representatives of all the stakeholders in education, government, donor agencies, NGOs, teachers’ unions and parent and student associations come to discuss and often violently argue burning educational issues. The professional skills content for journalists include practical, hands-on sessions in education and writing on development news and special features, interview techniques, analysis of statistics, etc.

In Part III, the two groups are brought back together to share the experiences and lessons learned through the first two separate sessions. They are then asked to jointly design national communication campaign strategies and action plans and to discuss the creation of national communication for education networks.

Most of the plenary sessions adopt the format of a lecture followed, the lecturers being confirmed experts in their respective fields, i.e. education specialists and economists from the World Bank and other UN agencies, officials of the ministries of education, representatives of parents’ associations, students’ and teachers’ unions, NGOs, journalists, etc. A field trip to an education project is organized for the fourth day of the workshop.

Finally, a major joint activity during the workshop is the daily computer technology class during which participants are either introduced to or intensify their skills in using computers as a communication tool and the Internet as a major source of education/ development information and knowledge.

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Two experienced consultants/trainers – one of development communication and the other of journalism – are recruited for the workshop to serve as principal trainers and moderators of the individual sessions. Local consultants, including faculty members from local journalistic training institutions if available, as well as the responsible staff members from COMED implementing agencies, the ADEA and the World Bank, assist the two consultants.

Evaluation

An evaluation of the first phase of COMED was held in Cotonou with key partners (7 to 9 December 2000) to identify lessons drawn from the phase during 1998-2000 and to chart future directions for COMED. Among its key findings are the following:

• Communication can help build mutual trust and respect by promoting dialogue, negotiation and consensus for education policies and programmes; but the context or environment of communication is crucial in determining these outcomes.

• Issues that influence communication for education include access to information, freedom of expression, the general national policy on information and communication and specific education sector guidelines on information and communication. Ministries of Information and Communication are important partners in this regard, since they often determine and manage policy.

• Communication officers in ministries of education have a variety of job descriptions and responsibilities, some of which may conflict with their communication assignment. Largely untrained in communication, and fairly lowly placed in the organizational hierarchy, they often feel inadequately prepared for their tasks as institutional image-makers and spokespersons. Specialized training

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and encouragement to join professional organizations (e.g. Public Relations Association) may enhance their job performance and career development.

• Advocacy directed at ministers and senior civil servants in ministries of education is required to create a policy environment in which communication for education and its implications are better understood and supported at the national level. Planning of the national workshops should include opportunities for high-level sensitization and commitment.

• Journalists are becoming more conscious of ethical considerations and professional standards when reporting on education. While this might remove some of the criticism of sensational coverage, it may not necessarily eliminate the irritation of education managers, sensitive to close investigative scrutiny or sharp editorial comments.

• Countries where education reporters and correspondents are organized in a professional group or network tend also to have more structured and less conflictingl relationships with communication officers and education news sources, leading to seemingly more continuous, diversified and better-informed coverage of education issues (e.g. Senegal, Kenya and Nigeria).

• The COMED regional workshops, by providing opportunities for journalists and communication officers from the same country to function as a team in preparing certain exercises and reports, and to acquire information about other country situations, seem to have helped improve mutual appreciation, more collegial and less threatening relationships among them, which hopefully will translate into increased collaboration in communication for education once in their home environment.

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• Exposure, through COMED workshops, to information and communication technologies, especially access to the Internet and its use as a research tool, provides much-appreciated opportunities for professional enhancement for both communication officers and journalists.

Many sources of education information are largely untapped because they are unknown. What is known is generally regarded as inaccessible or uninteresting. Research institutions, as well as their activities and databases in education, need to be better promoted among journalists and other communicators. Training in the use of educational statistics and other data-related experiences for reporters would be necessary, as is the creation of user-friendly Education Management Information Systems (EMIS).

Models from the business sector (advertising, public relations and communication agencies), can contribute to communication for education by emphasizing strategic and results-oriented institutional communication by ministries of education. They may also demonstrate to media managers the vast potential of education as a source of revenue through the creation of special products that appeal to the education sector and its widespread constituencies, including parents, students, publishers, equipment producers and booksellers. Professional communications organizations should be included in communication for education efforts.

In preparing national workshops, the participation of broadcasters from national and community radio stations should be specifically planned, in view of their acknowledged influence on the public’s information level and attitudes, especially in rural and semi-urban areas.

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Many of the lessons learned from the first phase of the COMED programme have been taken into account in preparing its new and current phase. The primary activity over the next few years will be to expand the programme’s reach through national training workshops for education journalists, ministry communication officers and other stakeholders in twenty-five countries. These workshops will use the six-module COMED curriculum, validated by national trainers in May 2001, to deliver basic skills in journalism and institutional communication to about thirty persons each over a six-day (forty-two hours) training session. It is thus expected to train a total of 750 professionals through national workshops.

Two of the national workshops were held in 2002: the first in Abuja, Nigeria in February and the second in June in Monrovia, Liberia. At the request of the Liberian government, journalists and information officers of the Ministry of Education were trained in June by COMED consultants using the programme’s curriculum, adapted to the situation of a war-torn country.

A possible outcome of the national training workshops will be draft outlines of a communication strategy for an EFA advocacy campaign based on the needs of each country.

The programme intends to consolidate co-operation among African journalists and communication officers in the education sector by initiating an electronic network, and an Internet-based discussion forum, also in 2002. These activities respond to some of the needs of the major constituencies for which COMED was set up.

In the period 2002/2004, COMED proposes to expand and deepen these programme thrusts through implementing other activities that include:

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• training of trainers from journalism and communication schools and institutes in order to spread interest and capacity for reporting on education among students and those undertaking in-service courses; • development of a programme of assistance to national authorities in the design of communication strategies for the fight against the ravages of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the African educational system; also envisaged is the production of a series of educational video films in two of Africa’s most prominent languages – Swahili and Hausa – for broadcasting by African television stations and diffusion in rural areas through mobile vans and other community- based distribution systems.

■ Funding and partnerships

This final section is a description of the COMED programme as a vivid manifestation of global partnership, evidenced by the way in which it began, as well as how it is both funded and managed.

As indicated earlier, COMED activities have been funded by ADEA, the World Bank and through its own resources, as well as through those provided by the Norwegian Education Trust Fund and by USAID. ADEA and the World Bank are implementing jointly the programme through their staff in Paris and in Cotonou respectively, in collaboration with the West African News Media and Development Centre (WANAD), based in Cotonou, Benin, which is the host agency of the COMED Secretariat. The training workshops have been and will be organized continually in partnership with various African media and communication institutions such as the School of Communication Studies at the University of Ghana, the School of Journalism at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, the Institute for the Science and Technology of Information and Communication (ISTIC)

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In response to the presentation of Akintola Fatoyinbo, Roseline A. Onyuka

The role of the media in national development is well documented in Kenya. In broad terms, the media has three roles: to inform, educate and entertain. Media have the task of creating awareness through public information and of ultimately helping people participate in national development.

The 1990 conference on Education for All (EFA) in Jomtien, Thailand underscored the importance of partnership in the provision of education. In particular, it was recognized that provision of Education for All couldn’t be achieved without effective involvement of the media, which is important in the delivery of content and advocacy.

Resulting from the outcomes of the conference, ministries of education in various countries have been working on different strategies to strengthen and cement partnerships with the media with a view of ensuring their involvement in all processes towards achieving EFA. Several initiatives have been undertaken at both international and regional levels to cement this partnership.

UNESCO initiated programmes in 1998 with the aim of convincing journalists to put education under national limelight through comprehensive and critical reporting of emerging issues in the sector.

The Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) and the World Bank began the COMED programme in 1998, which among other things brings education officials and education journalists together to work towards the promotion of education.

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Recognized suspicion between ministries of education and the media were at the origin of these initiatives that were intended to create relations between the two parties.

In Kenya, the Ministry of Education has developed a close working relationship with the media, which is based on mutual respect and transparency in the release and reporting of available information. The Ministry recognizes the fact that both print and electronic media are powerful tools for quick dissemination of education policies and other related issues which need to reach the wider public.

It is in this regard that the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in Kenya established a Public Relations Department to co-ordinate media liaison with the Ministry. However, due to resource and financial constraints, the department is not yet fully equipped or well developed and there is a need for capacity building to make it more effective. This is nonetheless a step in the right direction that aims to professionalize relations between the two parties.

The Ministry of Education in Kenya usually invites the media periodically to give a press release on new developments or emerging issues in the sector. Kenya has a fairly well developed media system compared to other countries in the East-African Region.

There are four daily newspapers and a certain number of weekly publications, as well as twelve radio and ten television stations, all except one privately owned. The daily newspapers circulate in all parts of the country. Since the Ministry of Education in Kenya touches on the lives of almost every family and generates a more interest than in any other sector, the different daily media houses have established an education desk. The managers of these desks have to a certain degree a sound educational background. They cover education issues

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However, for educational reporting to have an impact on society, the articles must be both vigorous and thorough. Stories should go beyond stating facts or events, include the background and show the causes of events, emerging trends and implications to society. This demand calls for professional competence, as Mr Fatoyimbo affirms above, which can only be achieved through the following:

• training for capacity building and availability of adequate resources and finances; • specialization; • continuous self-education by journalists; • creation of public information and communication units in ministries of education and institutions.

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1. Programme

20 June 2002 The battlefield and the logic of conflict 9.30–11.00 Opening statement: A marriage of two minds Speaker: Gudmund Hernes, Director IIEP Discussion and comparing notes 11.30–13.00 The contestants: How do ministries of education view their relationship with the media? Communicating via the mass media for education reforms: a Senegalese experience Speaker: Mamadou Ndoye, Executive Secretary, Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) Discussant: Gilbert Gardner Chair: Carl Lindberg Discussion and comparing notes 14.30–16.00 The role of the media in the construction of public opinion in education: an experience from Argentina Speaker: Juan Carlos Tedesco, Director, IIPE Buenos Aires Discussant: Jean Tayag Chair: Peep Ratas Discussion and comparing notes 16.30–18.00 Proactive versus reactive strategies: an experience from Norway Speaker: Egil Knudsen, Acting Head of Information Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs, Norway Discussant: Likhethe Molatwane Chair: Dileep Padgaonkar Discussion and comparing notes 167

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21 June 2002 9.00–10.30 The contestants: How do journalists view their experiences with the ministry of education? Specialized press in education Speakers: Robert Doe, Editor Times Education Supplement Brigitte Perucca, Editor Le Monde de l’éducation Chair: Gudmund Hernes Discussion and comparing notes

11.00–12.00 The general press Speaker: Dileep Padgaonkar, General Manager The Times of India Group Discussant: Trevor Cook Chair: Ole Briseid Discussion and comparing notes 12h00–13h00 Television Speaker: Cyril Auffret, Journalist, Head of Education Society Section, TF1 Discussant: Stella Hughes President: Henri Eyebe Ayissi Discussion and comparing notes 14.00–15.30 Professionalizing relations between ministries and the media Capacity building for better communication between MOEs and the press: the COMED programme Speaker: Akintola Fatoyinbo, Head COMED programme Discussant: Roseline Onyuka Chair: Abdul Waheed Khan Discussion and comparing notes

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16.00–17.30 Panel discussion: How to improve the working relationship between ministries of education and the media Chair: Gudmund Hernes Participants: Robert Doe Egil Knudsen Dileep Padgaonkar Akintola Fatoyinbo

17.30–18.00 Final remarks Speaker: Gudmund Hernes

2. List of participants

A. AFRICA

Cameroon Henri Eyebe Ayissi General inspector of services Ministry of Higher Education Yaoundé, Cameroon

Bénin Akintola Fatoyinbo Director COMED programme World Bank Cotonou, Bénin Mr Fatoyinbo is since deceased.

Kenya Roseline A. Onyuka Senior Deputy Director of Education Secondary Division Ministry of Education, Science and Technology Nairobi, Kenya 169

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South Africa Molatwane Likhethe Director – Media Liaison Officer Department of Education Pretoria, South Africa

B. AMERICA (Canada and USA)

Canada Gilbert Gardner Political Consultant Cabinet of the Minister Ministry of Education Quebec, Canada

C. ASIA

India Dileep Padgaonkar Executive Managing Director The Times of India Group New Delhi, India

Philippines Jean Tayag Director Office of Policy Planning, Research and Information Commission on Higher Education Pasig City, Philippines

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D. EUROPE

Estonia Peep Ratas Secretary General Ministry of Education Tartu, Estonia

France Brigitte Perucca Chief Editor Le Monde de l’éducation Paris, France

Cyril Auffret Journalist Television France 1 Paris, France

Norway Ole Briseid Director-General Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs Oslo, Norway

Jan Olav Bruvik Head of Information and Press Department Union of Education Norway Oslo, Norway

Marianne Brynildsen Head of Information Education Authority in Oslo Oslo, Norway

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Egil Knudsen Acting Head of Information Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs Oslo, Norway

Republic of Serbia Zarko Mihailovic Deputy Minister Ministry of Education and Sports Government of the Republic of Serbia Belgrade, Republic of Serbia

United Kingdom Trevor Cook Head of Press Office Department for Education and Skills London, United Kingdom

Robert Doe Editor Times Education Supplement London, United Kingdom

Sweden Carl Lindberg Deputy State Secretary Swedish Ministry of Education and Science Stockholm, Sweden

E. LATIN AMERICA

Mexico Jaime Tacher-Samerel Director-General Educational Television Deleg. Venustiano Carranza, Mexico 172

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F... INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA)

Mamadou Ndoye Executive Secretary

Than Hoa Desruelles Publication and Communication Officer

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

Abdul Waheed Khan Assistant Director-General Communications

Stella Hughes Chief of Media and Society Section Communication and Information Sector

International Institute of Educational Planning (IIEP)

Gudmund Hernes Director

Françoise Caillods Deputy Director

Estelle Zadra Assistant Programme Specialist

Michaela Martin Programme Specialist

Françoise Du Pouget Head Documentary Centre

Patricia Dias Da Graça Programme Specialist 173

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Ian Denison Chief of Publications

Bikas C. Sanyal Consultant

Florence Appéré Secretarial assistant

Paula Rouhiainen Student

IIEP-Buenos Aires Juan Carlos Tedesco Director

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International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep IIEP publications and documents

More than 1,200 titles on all aspects of educational planning have been published by the International Institute for Educational Planning. A comprehensive catalogue is available in the following subject categories:

Educational planning and global issues General studies – global/developmental issues

Administration and management of education Decentralization – participation – distance education – school mapping – teachers

Economics of education Costs and financing – employment – international co-operation

Quality of education Evaluation – innovation – supervision

Different levels of formal education Primary to higher education

Alternative strategies for education Lifelong education – non-formal education – disadvantaged groups – gender education

Copies of the Catalogue may be obtained on request from: IIEP, Dissemination of Publications [email protected] Titles of new publications and abstracts may be consulted at the following website: http://www.unesco.org/iiep

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep The International Institute for Educational Planning

The International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) is an international centre for advanced training and research in the field of educational planning. It was established by UNESCO in 1963 and is financed by UNESCO and by voluntary contributions from Member States. In recent years the following Member States have provided voluntary contributions to the Institute: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, India, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

The Institute’s aim is to contribute to the development of education throughout the world, by expanding both knowledge and the supply of competent professionals in the field of educational planning. In this endeavour the Institute co- operates with interested training and research organizations in Member States. The Governing Board of the IIEP, which approves the Institute’s programme and budget, consists of a maximum of eight elected members and four members designated by the United Nations Organization and certain of its specialized agencies and institutes.

Chairperson: Dato’Asiah bt. Abu Samah (Malaysia) Director, Lang Education, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Designated Members: Pekka Aro Director, Skills Development Department, International Labour Office (ILO), Geneva, Switzerland. Carlos Fortín Assistant Secretary-General, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Geneva, Switzerland. Edgar Ortegón Director, Projects and Investment Programming, Latin American and the Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES), Santiago, Chile. Joseph M. Ritzen Vice-President, Human Development Network, The World Bank, Washington, USA.

Elected Members: José Joaquín Brunner (Chile) Director, Education Programme, Fundación Chile, Santiago, Chile. Klaus Hüfner (Germany) Professor, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Zeineb Faïza Kefi (Tunisia) Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Tunisia to France and Permanent Delegate of Tunisia to UNESCO. Philippe Mehaut Directeur adjoint, Centre d’études et de recherches sur les qualifications, Marseille, France Teboho Moja (South Africa) Professor of Higher Education, New York University, New York, USA. Teiichi Sato (Japan) Special Adviser to the Minister of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Tokyo, Japan. Tuomas Takala (Finland) Professor, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland.

Inquiries about the Institute should be addressed to: The Office of the Director, International Institute for Educational Planning, 7-9 rue Eugène-Delacroix, 75116 Paris, France.

International Institute for Educational Planning www.unesco.org/iiep