The CCFE reviews “Building for the Future”.
January 13, 2010 by Joe Fogarty
We thought we’d seen the last of Independent Newspapers’ “Building for the Future”. Surely no company would persevere with a promotion that barred children who failed to reach their token quota? But after a 3 year hiatus this contemptible scheme is back - supported by Independent Newspapers and Bank of Ireland. The Campaign for Commercial-Free Education reviewed this marketing scheme and gave it’s verdict.
Commercial Scheme Evaluation.
Name: Building For the Future Primary Schools Initiative.
Sponsors: Independent Newspapers/Bank of Ireland/ TV3 (formerly supported by CIE Group.)
Objective: “the innovative and exciting project which has enriched primary schools throughout the nation with educational equipment and cash development grants, as well as focusing thoughts on the importance of the community to which we all contribute”
Classification: Incentive Scheme and Competition.
Year: 2000 – 2006 (Relaunched 2010)
Past Record: Building For the Future was first launched in 2000 and has run each year since. Claiming to be the “largest and best-supported initiative ever run among primary schools in Ireland”, more than 1,500 primary schools participated in Building for the Future in 2005.
Material: Schools receive a brochure outlining this year’s theme, a wall chart, poster, collector’s card and a letter “which you might like to photocopy and give to pupils to take home.” Materials display prominently the names and logos of the sponsoring companies.
Comments: The winning project in the Building For the Future competition receives a €20,000 grant for the school. Four provincial winners receive a state-of-the-art Smartboard worth over €7,000, and 26 county winners will each receive a €3,000 school development cash grant. Incentives such as televisions, video recorders and digital cameras have been given to each school agreeing to take part.
Schools may not enter the scheme, however, unless they collect a specified number of tokens from the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent newspapers. The quota is set at twenty tokens per child in the school for each project (Previously 25 and 30 tokens). Thus, a typical single-stream primary school must produce 4320 tokens in order to take part. These are obtained by purchasing the Independent newspapers at €1.80 - €2 per copy. Assuming children collected single token editions of the newspaper, this would equate to €7,776 expenditure.
(8 classes X 27 children X 20 tokens X €1.80 per copy) plus thousands more in free advertising and promotion within the school and wider community.
There are many suggestions as to how teachers may “maximise your token collection”. The wall chart contains a space for students’ names and allows you keep count of how many tokens each has brought in towards meeting their personal quota of 20. Schools are encouraged to place token collection boxes and collection cards in local newsagents. Parents, friends, neighbours and relatives are to be asked to start collecting tokens on the school’s behalf and the letter to them pleads; “I’m sure you can appreciate how much this would mean to us in developing our facilities for the children of this community.”
Recommendation:
While recognising and applauding the wonderful projects produced by students and their teachers, the Campaign for Commercial Free Education strongly condemns the token collection element of Building For the Future.
The Department of Education have long requested that school authorities
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consider carefully the implications of allowing any situation to develop which would result in parents being put under undue pressure to purchase a particular commercial product. (Circular 7/87)
We believe this is exactly the kind of pressure being put on children, parents and the school community to purchase Independent Newspapers. The use of wall charts to monitor individual purchases and appeals to the public to buy newspapers on behalf of the school is especially condemned. It may be asked how previous Ministers for Education can have praised as “a wonderful learning opportunity for students” a scheme which refuses entry to students who don’t buy the sponsor’s newspaper.
We urge people to register their disapproval and not to partake in the scheme until this exploitative demand for proof of purchase is ended. A reformed, non-commercial, Building For the Future scheme would be welcomed. The emphasis, however, must be on quality education for our schoolchildren and not Building Future Readership.
