10 Effective Strategies to Increase Enrollment in Private Schools

In this blog, we’ll concentrate on the ten strategies to increase enrollment at private schools and how to capitalize on what makes your school distinctive.

One of the main challenges of managing a private school is finding a balance when it comes to enrollment numbers. The number of students enrolled at your school determines the school’s budget, the programs it offers, and the teachers employed there. Focusing on increasing enrollment necessitates a well-coordinated effort and frequently new programmatic approaches.

Here are ten efficient methods your private school can use to boost enrollment.

Encourage Curriculum Exchange

One strategy that has worked well to increase parental involvement is to briefly share the upcoming year’s curriculum with the parent community before the start of the school year.

As a result, parents might predict what their children will learn, provide little guidance, and possibly review quadratic equations to help with homework! With the framework, it is simpler to provide parents with detailed curriculum outlines and it is possible to think of ways to include opportunities for parent input.

Additionally, curriculum sharing is an excellent chance to highlight areas where your school goes above and beyond what is required by the district, such as a coding project, an in-depth study of world history, an upcoming field trip, or sports instruction provided by coaches with NFL or NHL experience.

Use Social Media to Share School Projects

Encouragement of open communication between parents and what their children are learning in the classroom through both conventional and technological ways is another tactic for increasing enrolment and involvement.

To incorporate lessons about how to use social media and lab equipment safely, the school could offer a Facebook Live video stream of an elementary school play, or high school students could record Boomerang videos of science experiments. In a Boomerang video, a brief video clip plays normally then backward on a loop, perhaps capturing the brilliant burst of combusting magnesium than its return to an inert state.)

These are just a few examples of how technology courses can be used to safely share projects with interested families without having to register them as visitors or cram them into a lab.

Take Part in Community Outreach Activities

However, whenever it is feasible, it is crucial to establish personal connections. Consider participating as a school in your neighborhood’s Doors Open Day or other events of the same nature after school hours. Doors Open is a city-wide celebration that started in France in 1984 and has since spread to the United States, Canada, Australia, and Scotland. Providing guided tours of locations that are typically off-limits or charge an entrance fee, it encourages locals to learn about their neighborhoods.

It’s a great way to involve enthusiastic students and parents along with teachers or other school staff who are stationed strategically throughout the school as tour guide teams, in addition to potentially reaching future students’ families who might not have been interested in or able to attend the open house.

Sharing Stories from Your School

If you’re proud of the students at your school, even though it sounds corny, brag about them! Make sure your school website is up to date (with recent pictures of actual students, not stock stand-ins, if possible) so that students and parents can easily find the information they require. This is a straightforward step along the road to increasing enrollment in private schools.

Be sure to alert your local TV or print media whenever anything unusual happens, such as 3D printing lessons or participating in a forest cleanup.

It would be wise to take the next step in promoting your institution by starting or restarting a school blog on your website. The blog is open to contributions from teachers, students, administrators, and parents. Contributions can include classroom activities, sports season updates, and student success stories.

Never Stop Nurturing

Before a family submits an application and makes a commitment to a school, it typically requires five touchpoints, or specific interactions and communications. Even more, touchpoints will be necessary for many students, and frequently the best-fit students.

When handling all of your prospects and re-enrollments, the amount of follow-up required might seem overwhelming. However, you can still speak to individual prospects’ needs with less effort and time by automating various touchpoints along the way while keeping in mind your personas.

Lead nurturing uses automated communication to help give families the information they need, when they need it most. You can streamline your process by using lead nurturing without sacrificing personalized and intimate messages.

A student needs to be nurtured in more ways than just getting them to an open house or an admissions event, though those still have their place. You can schedule individualized follow-ups and organize events that are centered on the issues that matter most to potential students using the information you gather in your initial inquiry along with additional information captured by your team and recorded in your CRM.

Leverage Your Fans

Your best advocates are rabid followers. They frequently generate goodwill toward your school as well. You are losing out if you aren’t utilizing that energy or emphasizing that love. Make sure there are simple ways for parents and students to express their love for your institution. Here are some examples of ways your fans can help spread the word about your school:

Use Social and Email to Get the Word Out

Send an email to your actively enrolled families informing them of upcoming school events so they can join in the fun. In order to help promote your events, you can also ask them to share posts on social media for your school. Alternatively, ask recipients to forward your email to any interested families at the end of the message to help you attract more potential students to your open houses.

Use Social Proof

Social proof makes it easier for families to understand why actual students and parents adore your institution. Interview the biggest supporters of your campus to produce written or visual testimonials, and then use them all over your school website. These can be short and can come from various people at your school including parents, faculty, and students.

Testimonials can give an inside look at what students value most about the school, including the extracurricular activities, classes offered, and teachers. A prospective family’s decision to choose your school can advance with the aid of genuine and organic stories.

Offer Restricted Content

Common examples of gated content also called a content offer, including webinars, downloaded ebooks, whitepapers, and other assets that provide knowledge that parents will find useful. It is used to generate leads by providing prospective parents with the helpful information in exchange for personal information like name, email address, phone number, the ages of their school-age children, and other vital details.

It is beneficial to gather contact information from families so that you can continue to interact with them in the future.

Commence Utilizing Email Marketing

Currently, one of the best marketing tactics for schools is email marketing. You can use this tool to reach out to parents and other members of the community when you want to advertise a school event or other activity. Additionally, you can ask recipients of the email to pass it to other families who might be interested in enrolling their children, or you could even send parents periodic surveys.

You can attract more potential students to your school by using email marketing, make sure to have an email signature.

Remain Relevant

For your private school to see a rise in enrolment, you need satisfied students, parents, and a good parent-teacher relationship. Private schools are frequently chosen by families for their children because they provide flexible teaching methods, a sense of security, and a calmer learning environment.

But more than ever, it’s important to understand that modern technology and its use of it in all professional decisions are fundamental to the future. Some students are curious about how the most recent technological developments are being applied in industries like science, agriculture, astronomy, communications, and medicine.

As a result, it’s essential to have a technology lab in your lesson plans, as well as tech-savvy instructors, and learning environments. Technology is probably incorporated into the programs and practices used by the school in the relevant areas, even though it typically doesn’t replace textbooks and lectures.

Drive Enrollments Via Data-driven Insights

Enrollment growth requires data, which is crucial. You must be aware of how your admissions team has historically performed in order to move forward and set precise and attainable enrollment goals.

To find bottlenecks preventing more potential students from applying and enrolling, conduct an audit of your admissions procedure and take a closer look at your admission funnel. Verify conversion rates at each point in your admissions funnel and keep an eye on retention rates to identify bottlenecks.

Next, find out which stage of the sales process prospects are most likely to abandon or fail to convert so you can optimize your entire funnel. Analyze how frequently your team follows up with prospects as well as the most efficient communication channels.

What Makes Your School Unique?

What makes your school special? What distinctive programs do you provide? Why is your staff happy to work at your school?

Every school is different. Every school has a personality, a history, and a culture. Determining what that entails and communicating it to your community is crucial. The sports teams, unique programs, instruction based on religion, or different methods of teaching in the classroom could all be considered distinctive features of your school. This is the “brand” of your school and the reason that parents may recognize it as a place to send their children.

There’s a chance the brand isn’t what you think it is. To begin, find out what people like best about the school by polling staff, students, and parents. You can get a good idea of the reasons why parents initially sent their children to school by asking the parents. Pro tip: you can use their quotes later in promotional messages

Perhaps you’re considering trying something novel at your school to make yourself more distinctive from the crowd. Prospective parents will be interested in a wide variety of programs and options for differentiation. Each requires adjusting the curriculum, training staff (or hiring new staff), and getting the necessary resources for the school.

Conclusion: Increase Enrollment in Private Schools

Following the implementation of these tactics, you can examine which enrollment tactics have the greatest impact on enrollment to inform future data-driven decisions. By doing so, you can better allocate your resources and increase admissions even more.

We wish you luck as you develop a supportive, innovative school culture that encourages others to enroll and as you meaningfully engage your students and parents.

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