Sponsorship in schools under the spotlight

Date: 16/04/1998

By Peter Chapman

INDUSTRY plans to target children in cash-strapped schools and colleges with advertising and sponsorship schemes are being scrutinised by consumer affairs officials in the European Commission.

The institution has launched a study into schools in the UK, Belgium, France, Spain and Scandinavia to find out whether there are big differences in approach between member states.

"Sponsorship in schools is becoming more and more important. We want to know what the background to this is and to see if there are any problems," said an official in the Commission's newly formed educational consumer affairs unit.

"There is concern in several member states over how far the private sector should be involved, and if there is a possibility of avoiding it completely or whether sponsorship should be accepted as a basic fact of life."

A growing number of state schools are turning to sponsorship schemes to make up for a lack of funding from governments intent on keeping a tight rein on spending to hold budget deficits down.

Examples of the way industry is targeting youngsters in schools range from offers of free computers for information technology departments and Coca-Cola drinks machines to posters and billboards put up on school premises advertising products.

The Commission official said that once the institution had completed its study, it might call on member states and industry to develop a unified EU code of conduct establishing a common approach to regulating sponsorship in schools, but stressed that it had no plans to propose Union legislation on the issue.

"The Commission does not have the power to propose its own code of conduct and then discuss it," she said, pointing out that education policy was a matter for individual member states. But she added: "We could bring together consumer organisations, member states and economic operators to talk about such a code."

Nigel de Gruchy, general secretary of the UK's National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers (NAS/UWT), told European Voice that the issue was beginning to cause concern among British teachers in state schools struggling to make ends meet on the funding they received from local authorities.

"We are very concerned about the increasing involvement of sponsorship in British schools," he said.

The UK government is proposing to step up the contribution of the private sector by the creation of 'education action zones' - clusters of schools in deprived areas to be run by partnerships of business and local authorities.

But this too is causing concern among teachers. "We do not believe it is appropriate for state schools to be privately funded. Nor do we believe it is right that schools should be competing with each other for such funds," said De Gruchy.

Commission to investigate the increasing role of the commercial sector in state-run schools in EU Member States.