Are you currently experiencing enrollment management challenges? There can be many reasons for this, from shifting population demographics to enhanced competition or concerns related to tuition or your perceived value, but I believe the most underrated and potentially impactful driver of unmet enrollment goals is simply factors related to SCHOOL CULTURE. More specifically, culture as it relates to the experience your students and families feel on a daily basis. You can implement a new content strategy with a high-functioning website and great user experience, but if your culture stinks, well,...good luck.
Too many enrollment management plans I see contain nothing about assessing, measuring, analyzing, and aiming to improve “school culture” as it relates to the experience of your key customers – and in particular, students. And even more frustrating is the fact that many independent schools have no one tasked with ensuring a healthy school culture. Enrollment management leaders are hyper-focused on leads and inquiries and, despite a newfound emphasis on the re-recruitment element of enrollment management, they are often given very little access to attack key drivers related to the student experience.
Simply put, happy students don’t typically leave schools. But producing happy students doesn’t mean we are acquiescing to every one of their demands. After all, we all can’t construct Chick-Fil-A franchises on all of our campuses! But allowing students to feel their voice is heard and their opinion counts does yield great dividends. It’s easy to do, too! All you need to start is to simply provide forums, from surveys to small focus groups, where school leaders can listen and collect feedback from students.
What matters as it relates to the student experience? How about this list to begin with?
- Their schedule at school, schedule before/after school = their vertical day overall
- The type of teaching/learning occurring – is it rooted in best practices or simply a fast paced, “let’s make sure every class meets every day for forty minutes” routine that inevitably leads to lecture-based instruction and less opportunities for genuine thinking/learning related to higher order critical thinking skills. Start, end, and transition times matter, too!
- The quantity and quality of homework assignments
- The sense of predictability and support. These are key drivers according to Independent School Management (ISM) research.
- Leadership opportunities or lack thereof
- The “personality” of their respective class both in and out of school. Do you have 20 female students in the class, and you hear about a birthday party where only 15 of them were invited. That smells like trouble, and something I would want to investigate.
- The online presence/interactions between students
- Opportunities to grow and to be pushed into a zone of proximal discomfort, or a place where they experience short-term tolerable stress. This is an amazing zone for growth. Toxic stress zones are not. They actually cause trauma-like responses if occurring too frequently. Bored students aren’t good for school culture. Appropriately challenged students who feel that their teachers cherish and champion them are.
As a Head of School, I recognize that a healthy faculty culture is essential to my ability to be successful. I respect this and will always work hard to create a culture where each educator feels valued, respected, and encouraged to grow while taking smart risks. But I will also be unrelenting on the front that being a content-focused curriculum expert is simply not enough at our institution. We want to hire and grow faculty who are eager to become student-experts. They must genuinely like kids, and their professional growth should include an ongoing commitment to better understanding how students think, learn, and operate.
So, who is responsible for the student experience as it relates to school culture at your school? You better have an answer because it matters immensely to your enrollment management efforts. No offense to academic leaders, but they often aren’t equipped with the skills related to customer service and internal marketing that admission and enrollment management professionals possess. Heads of School are routinely stretched with responsibilities in all aspects of school life, including life in both the strategic (Board of Trustees) and operational realms. I recognize the skills that many Enrollment Management professionals bring to the table on this critical endeavor, and my hope is they become more of a focal point of efforts related to this all-important recruitment and re-recruitment driver of enhancing school culture in the years ahead.
Steve Salvo
Head of School
St. Mary's Episcopal Day School