The Institute of Fiscal Studies last week released a new report, Private Schooling in the UK and Australia, which explores experiences of private schooling in the two countries and draws similarities and lessons “from each country’s individual experience”.
A number of the report’s core findings relating to the UK independent schools market place are relatively well documented elsewhere, not least by mtm. These include tracking of “long-run decline” in the pupil-teacher ratio in the independent sector, and the growth of academies and free schools.
However, the report also flags up two trends relating to target markets that independent school educational strategies should take notice of.
1) Independent school fee increases have significantly outstripped income, even amongst the top earners.
The IFS research shows that “during the 1980s independent school fees grew rapidly… (but) top incomes amongst families with children grew by a similar amount”. The period from 1992 to 2008, however, is drastically different, with increases amongst top earners of around 35% compared with day school fee increases of 83% and boarding school fee increases of 65%.
This statistic provides some explanation for the observation that ”independent schools have failed to capitalise on long-term growth in their target market” (i.e. social classes 1&2), explored in the mtmconsulting Education Sector Report.
2) “Children are at least three times more likely to attend a private school if one of their parents attended one”.
School marketers should take note of this. While the Independent Schools Council commented in The Guardian, quite rightfully, that this reflects a high level of satisfaction amongst buyers of independent education, it also suggests that independent school marketing is not engaging with ‘first-time buyers’.
School marketing strategies perhaps should thus be amended to appeal more strongly to this market place, through better understanding buyer priorities in school selection, the value of means-tested fees support and promotion activities to alert would-be buyers to their local independent school’s presence.
Anecdotal evidence has suggested that schools who have embarked on radio and television campaigns have been successful in enhancing recruitment from families new to the independent sector, and we might anticipate collaborative efforts from regional groups of schools to better alert first-time buyers to them.
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