Many private schools don’t often think, in a strategic way, about the competitive factors that sway a family to choose one educational program over another, with the exception of using college placement lists and an occasional ranking. Doing so will be to the schools advantage.
Imagine being a tri-athlete and training for a triathlon. If you don’t know what events you are doing, or the lengths of the events (running could be anywhere from 3.2k to 26 miles), you are going to be less effective. When contending for full-pay families, you need to know what key factors they will be examining about their school choices, or, run the risk of focusing on the wrong distance -losing the competition.
Schools have taught families to look at a number of factors as the standard; in some ways we have created a monster. One such example is small class size; something costly to maintain and not the only indicator of what makes the classroom experience excellent. The competitive factors below are commonly used by parents; you may have others to add, based on your respective area.
- College or secondary placement lists – a monster we created
- Class size – a monster we created
- Quality of faculty
- Quality of facilities – a monster we created
- Academic excellence
- Breadth and depth of program
- Some type of co-curricular excellence
- Location
- Brand recognition
- Promulgated philosophy and values of the school
Unfortunately, if these are the primary factors that schools emphasize in their promotional materials, then it makes it easy for families to select among them. They rate them simply based on what they can ascertain (accurate or inaccurate) from the information they collect. They tally what they learn, add a little variation for emotion, and then make their decision. With the exception of what families might find under philosophy and values of the school, there isn’t anything giving bonus points for the respective school – differentiation is what I am talking about.
To recruit more full-pay families, schools will either have to be better at the categories above, or create new categories in which to compete – differentiation. Examples of a new category would be schools created for students with learning disabilities – these schools offer something unique. You can also make programmatic changes. Some schools have instituted the International Baccalaureate (IB) program when there are no other IB choices in the market area. Others have special programs that makes them standout. During The Five Pillars program, you will identify and develop new competitive factors, unique to your school, to place in the minds of the consumer. This modifies the competitive factor’s rating that you would have received with the common factors above and attracts full-pay families who are interested in your differentiation.