mtmconsulting’s Principal and education business strategy expert Melanie Tucker writes on the recent conflicting evidence in the media regarding pupil recruitment trends in independent schools.
Well, who do you believe? In January, the Daily Mail reported “Cash-strapped parents desert private schools for the state system.” The Telegraph weighed in with “Private schools ‘face cutbacks to survive.’” And London’s Evening Standard gleefully picked on a comment by Tony Little: “Fee-paying schools will close, warns Eton head.” In its relentless search for news to terrify the readers, the media seemed determined to prove that the independent sector, like the economy, was heading off a cliff.
Independent schools were angered by coverage like this, not least because it didn’t chime with many schools’ experience. Within weeks, the sector hit back: HMC produced a survey of 90 members claiming to show that most were experiencing growth in, or at least no less demand, despite the recession. The media, taken by surprise perhaps, reported the figures positively.
Not to be outdone, the GSA surveyed its own member schools and released similarly optimistic figures about prospects for September 2009. By this time, the media had recovered its sceptical poise. The Evening Standard, faced with figures showing that 76% of girls’ schools were expecting stable or increased numbers, reported that “Demand drops for places at a quarter of girls’ schools”!
It’s easy to see why the associations acted as they did, even if, as everyone in schools recognises, any forecasts for September must be provisional at this stage. Confidence breeds confidence, and confidence above all is what parents need when committing themselves to several years of very expensive education for their children.
All the evidence from the 1990s recession suggests that it may take a year or more for the full effects to be felt in recruitment and retention of pupils. But it’s rare to meet anyone in independent schools these days who — whatever September 2009 brings — isn’t expecting 2010 and 2011 to be a much tougher environment.
Which means it is critical for all education businesses to get their school or college’s strategies right now. Recessions have a brutal way of finding out the weaknesses in any business strategy. Schools which have coasted for years, sustained by their reputation alone, by a benign and prosperous market, and by a relentless attack—in the same media—on the condition of the state education sector, will find themselves ill-equipped to cope.
So ask yourself some hard questions. How will we manage if pupil numbers fall by two, or five or even 10 per cent? Is every section of your school or college’s business sustainable? What reductions in fixed costs can we make without damaging the school’s central nervous system? Have we a realistic and achievable marketing strategy for the next three years? Being able to answer these questions positively will put your school in a strong position to profit from the upswing in demand which will surely follow.
Because one other thing is also certain. The factors which have driven rising parental demand for high quality independent education in the recent past—standards, discipline, a holistic school education, individual care—have not changed, and are not likely to in the foreseeable future.
