In a world of greater choice and innovation across K-12 education, parents and guardians have more say in how and where their children are educated. Why and how do families choose schools? In this series, you’ll learn the five areas — the decision drivers — that work in tandem to guide each family’s choice of school.
Why do families choose to educate their children in your school or district? Families in your area likely have options other than your school. Other institutions might have longer track records than you or are perceived as being more prestigious. Some may have bigger campuses, lower tuition, or be a free, conveniently located public school.
With so many factors at play, it’s amazing families can make a decision at all. The only thing that’s certain is every family’s decision-making process is different — but parent and family surveys from around the world have given us insight into why and how families choose their child’s education.
Research shows that families make their enrollment decision across five major decision drivers — drivers which subsequently form the five priority focus areas for district and school leaders.
What are the behaviors, actions, attitudes, and interactions that negatively impact these decision drivers, and what are those that serve to attract and retain students and families?
The five things families that guide a parent or guardian to your school are:
What are the behaviors, actions, attitudes, and interactions that negatively impact these decision drivers, and which serve to attract and retain students and families?
In the coming weeks, we’ll examine these closer. Today, you’ll learn more about the driver that begins before a family even enrolls with you: your school or district’s brand and reputation.
The brand and reputation of an education institution and its faculty are important variables for families deciding on a school.
In fact, the opinions of other families often outweigh more quantitative metrics in making school choice decisions.
In an increasingly competitive market, institutions have turned their attention to evaluating and managing their reputation and brand perception.
There is no one thing that determines whether you have a negative or positive reputation. A variety of factors play into that. Some factors, like what people in your community say about your school, can be hard (or even impossible) to change.
But there are things you can focus on to cultivate a positive reputation for your school.
First, consider some positive and negative factors that contribute toward your school’s brand and reputation:
You probably have a good idea of what your school’s reputation is in your local community. If you don’t — or even if you just want to gauge how accurate your own perception is — you can conduct anonymous surveys or meet with current and previous families to evaluate how people perceive your school.
With that knowledge, there are then things you can do to improve your school’s brand and reputation. That, in turn, will make your school more appealing to prospective families.
Here are some tips and ideas. This list isn’t comprehensive by any means, but it will hopefully get you thinking about ways you can build a positive perception of your school.
The most important tool for educating families about your school is your website. Your website is more than just a repository for information — it’s also your one chance to make a stellar first impression.
However, whatever claims you make about your school, back them up with evidence.
And if your school is outperforming the competition, don’t be shy.
Be proud. Tell the world!
Make a personal connection with each family. You want to create a bond between prospective families and your school community.
School tours are a common form of engagement. Families on tours have taken the effort to visit you in real life, and they are interested in more than seeing the library.
These families want to get a sense of what your school is really like:
Again, the goal is to let parents envision their child at your school. Your trophy case and empty gym might be impressive, but parents are more interested in seeing a classroom in action.
You don’t want families to walk away thinking your school has a strong math program. You want families to think, “Suzy will love Mr. Peterson’s algebra class.”
However, school tours are only one way to engage. You can also offer shadow days or have personalized contact with a prospective family, where you learn their interests and then build outreach around that.
For example, if a student is interested in playing a specific sport, a phone call from that coach would really let them know you’re paying attention.
Remember what we mentioned earlier about field-side conversations at soccer games or off-the-cuff conversations in grocery stores? If your school comes up, what are teachers and current families saying about you?
A lot goes into marketing, and time is absolutely a huge component of building a positive school brand and reputation, especially if you’re working to reverse pre-existing perceptions. SchoolMint can help you!
Our strategic marketing services team can help you on a variety of fronts:
Here’s what a previous client had to say about SchoolMint’s marketing services:
“This report has become my enrollment bible. It captured everything we were doing wrong and a lot of things we had no idea we were doing wrong.” — Geoffrey Vu, Principal | Oakland Unified School District