Coaches and Travel Strategy

A fundamental limiting feature of your school is its location. However, your catchment boundary can be blurred by providing transportation. Previous research by James and the MTM team suggests that parents will drive 30mins to school, but will drive 15 – 25mins to a bus to take the children another 30 mins.

So, how do the logistics work Bursar?

There are 3 fundamental decisions:

• Shall the transport system make money?
• How do we provide the transport?
• What size vehicles do we need to provide?

MTM recommends that this is not necessarily to make money from transportation, but that providing a solution that meets your cost target is the way to avoid driving the need for subsidies. Parents see the provision of transportation as a service and if it can be offered at the right price it benefits everyone involved.

What about the transportation equipment? Should a school buy or lease a minibus? The economics of buying and running your own vehicles are open to debate – starting with a Taxi and working up will help to build the business case – but it is essential that whatever transportation is used is sign written & carries school branding. Every taxi, minibus and coach company will fight this request, and tell you how magnetic signs damage their busses, etc. Don’t listen to them. If they won’t, find someone that will.

What size vehicles do we need to provide? Segmenting the local area and determining where pupils at the school are traveling from is an effective way to understand where the pupil centres are. Targeting these areas through a transport strategy increases the likelihood of attracting pupils form these areas. Mapping where your current pupils live will also allow you to predict the location and quantity of pupils. Finally, before term starts review the numbers and locations of the pupil, and finalise the plans.

Should I run vehicles through an area where we don’t currently recruit from? – where a liveried vehicle travels increases the likelihood of attracting pupils through increased market awareness. Planning routes that travel through areas likely to consider independent schools offers a significant recruitment attraction from families who were possible not aware they could even get to you.