Understand Your Market, Strengthen Your School

At this year’s Prep Heads Conference at Radley College, I talked about something many heads are living with: falling pupil numbers. Over the last decade, a great many prep schools have seen their rolls shrink. For some the decline has been gentle, and for others it has been steep.

Few heads were surprised that numbers have been falling. The questions that matter are why, and whether schools will understand that in time to change what happens over the next ten years.

Nobody in the room was surprised that numbers have been falling. The questions that matter are why, and whether schools will understand that in time to change what happens over the next ten years.

Pupil numbers don’t tell the whole story

Most of us judge the health of a school by its roll. Are we full? Are we up on last year? In a shrinking market, though, the roll on its own doesn’t tell you enough. A falling roll usually has two causes, and they need very different responses.

The first is fewer children. If there are fewer children in your area, and in most areas there are, you could keep exactly the same share of local families and still have fewer pupils. That is a demographic problem, and the schools around you are facing it too.

The second is losing share. Here the families are still there, but they are choosing someone else: another prep, the new pre-prep a senior school has opened down the road, an outstanding state primary, or simply waiting until eleven.

You can’t change how many children are born in your area. But you can change whether their parents choose you. That makes market share a marketing outcome. Yet in most prep schools, marketing is not in the room when the decisions that drive it are made.

The market has changed

Three forces are reshaping the prep school market at the same time.

• Demographics. There are fewer children, and the fall is uneven. Some catchments are holding up while others have dropped sharply, so the national picture tells you very little about your own.
• Affordability. VAT on fees, the loss of business rates relief, and higher national insurance and pension costs have pushed fees up faster than incomes. Every family has a ceiling. It differs from one postcode to the next, and for many families it has now come down to meet the fees.
• Competition. Senior schools are opening their own pre-preps and preps to secure their pipeline. All-through models are spreading, and schools are merging. State primaries have improved, so parents who once would have gone independent at four now stay until seven, or eleven, or don’t come at all. Long-standing feeder routes are being redrawn.

Put together, these make a market that is smaller, more sensitive to price and more competitive than at any point in most of our careers. The schools that hold their own will be the ones that understand it best.

Marketing has been put in the wrong box

Ask what “marketing” means in a prep school and most people will describe promotion: the prospectus, the website, social media, open mornings, the banners on the railings.

All of that matters. But promotion is only one part of marketing, and arguably the last part. Properly understood, marketing is the discipline of understanding your market and shaping what you offer to fit it. It asks who the families out there are, what they need, what they can afford and who else they are considering. Only then does it decide how to talk to them.

Business schools teach this as the four Ps: product, price, place and promotion. In most prep schools, marketing has been given just one of them.

Fees are often set at last year’s level plus a percentage, with little evidence of what local families can bear. Decisions on a new nursery, wraparound care or an entry point are made in SLT or by governors, and marketing is asked afterwards to “get the word out”. Then, when numbers dip, the first question is “What’s marketing doing?” No new website can fix a fee your catchment can’t reach, or a school day that doesn’t work for two working parents.

Four questions every school should be able to answer

1. Who is out there? How many children are in your catchment at each entry point, and how will that change over the next five years? Where do your families live now, compared with ten years ago?
2. Who are you really competing with? Not just the preps you meet on the sports field. Include senior schools moving down the age range, state primaries, and the option of not going independent at all.
3. Why do families choose you, and why don’t they? Talk to the families who visited and went elsewhere, or who left at seven. That is where the most valuable insight is.
4. What can they afford? Not a national average, but the affordability headroom in the postcodes you actually recruit from, and how it changes each time your fees rise.

Alongside those, watch a few early-warning measures every term rather than every year:

• conversion at each stage, from enquiry to visit, registration and acceptance
• where your lost families go, and why
• movement at every entry and exit point, especially the ones you have always taken for granted

If you can answer all four questions today, with evidence, you’re ahead of most schools. If you can’t, finding out is the most important piece of work your school can do this year.

What skilled marketing delivers

Properly positioned, a skilled marketer strengthens a school in six ways.

• Positioning: a clear sense of what you stand for, specific enough that a parent could explain it at the school gate. “A happy, well-rounded education” doesn’t count, because every school says it.
• Product: bringing the market into decisions about entry points, wraparound care, the shape of the school day and flexibility for working families.
• Price: evidence on affordability and price sensitivity, so fees and bursaries are set with the market in view.
• Pathways: mapping and actively managing relationships with feeder nurseries and senior schools.
• Pipeline: owning the admissions journey from first enquiry to first day and beyond. Retention is marketing too: a family you keep from seven to thirteen is worth more than any new enquiry.
• Promotion: targeted and measured, because it rests on everything above.

That needs three things from school leaders. First, a seat at the table: whoever leads marketing should be part of the conversation when fees, provision and strategy are decided. Second, real skills: research, data analysis and strategy as well as creative communication. We would never appoint a head of maths because they made attractive worksheets. Third, governance: market data in front of governors every term, with market share tracked alongside the roll and the budget.

“We can’t afford a strategic head of marketing”

This is a response I sometimes, and I understand it.

But consider what the role is for. A good head of marketing is responsible for growth: filling places, keeping families, and protecting the fee income that pays for everything else in the school. A single empty place costs a full year’s fees. A family lost at four can cost nine years of them.

So the question isn’t whether you can afford to invest in marketing. It’s whether you can afford not to.

It doesn’t have to start with a big appointment. What matters is the role, not the job title. Bring whoever handles your marketing into conversations about fees and provision. Give them the data, and invest in their training and development. Buy in research when you need it, or share expertise across a group or with a neighbouring school. Start where you can, but start.

Three things to do on Monday morning

1. Map where your current families live, and compare it with where they lived ten years ago.
2. Find out where last year’s lost enquiries went, and ask them why.
3. Bring your head of marketing into your next discussion about fees and strategy. Not to take notes, but to bring evidence.

If you work in marketing or admissions, use the four questions to open that conversation with your head and bursar. If you’re a head or bursar, ask your marketing lead what they would need to answer them.

The last ten years were shaped by the market. The next ten can be shaped by schools that understand it. At MTM, we want every school to succeed, and understanding your market gives yours the best chance of being stronger in ten years’ time than it is today.