Read: Co-op looks to its schools to win young customers’ loyalty
When businesses talk about young people it is often about how to attract them as customers through social media, celebrity ambassadors or competitions to win the latest gadget. The Co-operative Group has a rather different approach to connecting with the next generation, however — it is teaching them.
This week thousands of pupils in Co-op-branded uniforms will return after the summer break and file through the doors of 28 academies in West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire and Merseyside. For those pupils, Covid-19 has thrown up a challenge like no other, with lockdowns, home-schooling, regular testing and masks.
According to Steve Murrells, chief executive of the Co-op, a group whose interests span grocery shops to funerals, as well as schools, the pandemic has highlighted widening inequality. “That’s no more evident than when you look at the challenges that young people have got in front of them,” Murrells said.
Education was one the Co-op’s founding principles. Its pioneers in the 1840s in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, used to have schools above their grocery shops. The modern Co-op Group has been in the business of academies since 2009, although Murrells said that it was not until the group invested £3.6 million three years ago to boost the programme that they became more than a sideshow.
Britain’s biggest mutual, owned by its five million members, is now planning to expand its academies to 40 by the end of next year, which it hopes will improve the standards of failing schools, benefit local communities and boost awareness of the Co-op among thousands of future customers. It has opened a Co-op sixth-form college too, which means its smartest pupils are not lost to the group after they turn 16.
“If I could have chipped them all I would have done because they’re incredibly bright and so very diverse,” Murrells said of the pupils.