The summer holiday is over, and a new session is on. For those of us in the private education sector, we understand that the hardest part of enrollment is retaining students and having them re-enroll year after year. Perhaps you have been thinking about the right plan to implement ahead of the re-enrollment season, worry no more as we are here to help put you through.
Before we go into details, you need to have at the back of your mind that the re-enrollment plan begins at the start of the new school year. The marketing and admission team should be made to understand that parents start to assess your school the first day they drop their kids off at school. And oftentimes, the decision to re-enroll in your school is made before the end of the school year. This is why you need to offer value for the investment in regards to the tuition they are paying in your school.
Here are 5 things you can do that will give you an edge ahead of enrollment time:
1. Assess your Families
What are the current families saying about your school? Are they satisfied or not? And what are you doing about those that are not? Assessment has to do with going through the names of students that you think are eligible for re-enrollment. This cannot be done unless you have an idea about how satisfied the families are with your services.
Work with the teachers to assign a “return likelihood” value on students, this gives you a better idea of where to focus your enrollment on. Since the teachers are those that spend more time with the students, they are more likely the face of the school to most families. Encourage them to always do their best in meeting the need of each student
2. Connect with the Families
Communication comes after assessment. The head of school, teachers, and administrators must all take part in communicating with families of students registered in their school. You do not wait till the PTA meeting before talking to them, and let it be individually apart from the bulk emails you send. It might seem tasking to talk to more than a hundred parents before the year runs out, but the benefits that are attributed to it are numerous.
By doing this, you get to know about each family’s concerns, needs, frustrations, and joys. To make this easier for you, create a list of the number of parents you’d like to talk to weekly till the end of the year. Another useful way to connect with families is via social media. By posting daily with pictures and stories of student/classroom life, offering up discussion topics, and sharing blog posts, you encourage parents to engage with you and each other, and you show them all the good that’s happening at school.
You can also read on 6 tips On Ensuring your Ideal Families Enroll Year after Year
3. Keep the School Happy
As a school owner or administrator, give your teachers and staff plenty of reasons to smile. When your teachers are happy, the students are happy and ultimately the families are happy as well. Being a good school head to your teachers and non-teaching staff leads to a happy team.
Be accessible to them, show them that you care, and their opinion matters as well. Where your help is needed, be there at all times. Once the teachers are happy with the school, their zeal will show to the families.
4. Host a Parents’ Event
As the school year runs to an end, plan an event to encourage early enrollment. This gives an opportunity to spend time with the parents and talk about the state of the school. Include a re-enrollment stand at the event so parents can get incentives when they re-enroll on site. This will let them know that you have them in mind and would do anything to have them stay with you. Let parents share testimonies at the event, and give updates about plans for the new school year.
5. Rollover Plan
Just as the plan is for your data subscription on your devices, the same can be implemented for your parents. Rather than having them fill in forms every year, they subscribe to a plan that allows them re-enroll yearly automatically without you asking them to. Continuous re-enrollment works on the belief that a family’s educational choice is generally a long-term commitment for the duration of their child’s schooling years.
It may not readily occur to you that by asking your families to re-enroll each year, you are giving them pause as to whether they actually want to stay at your school, even if they are satisfied and never considered leaving up until that point. It may even cause second-guessing that would not have happened if you employed a continuous re-enrollment plan.
Your school is assured a good re-enrollment when the time comes the following year if you implement these tips before the end of the school year.
