6 minute read
HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED
Hilary Moriarty gives a personal perspective on the way in which schools marketing has evolved over the years
Sometimes you live through revolutionary times without even noticing. Then one day you wake up, and the world is different. I’m thinking in particular of the world of schools’ marketing.
Selling on merit
I remember a time when it was rare for an independent school to employ anyone with a particular brief labelled ‘Marketing’. There was a fairly pervasive notion that a good school would sell itself on its own merits. Parents would like what they saw and heard about a school and its pupils, almost literally on a personal basis – smartly dressed students behaving well on the streets, occasional articles in the local press when a student was selected for a county or national team, Oxbridge entrants smiling in the local paper. Happy pictures of certificates being waved on Results Days. And for the many independent day schools – the school was there, around the corner, within reach. Why go elsewhere?
‘Go elsewhere’ is of course exactly what independent boarding schools hoped parents would do. Sometimes a very long way elsewhere. I write as someone who lived in South Wales and sent a son to boarding school in Lancashire. I don’t recall any advertisement for the school, but they had stayed in touch with my husband because he was an old boy. Indeed, former pupils have long been fair game, if not for their sons and daughters to join the school, then for contributions to the school’s continuing prosperity in a very demanding market.
Apart from academic results, schools need to build and renovate to present a fine twenty-first century face to today’s
discerning parents. Many an ‘old boy’ or ‘old girl’ will have contributed to the schools’ fund raising as a matter of course and even conscience – giving something back to a school which had served them well.
And here’s something of a crossover – all that fund raising – is it marketing or development? Actually, it’s both. And each contribute to the most vital job of all, recruiting pupils so that the school is pleasantly ‘full’, whatever its intended size. It has pupils today who will do very well academically and in many other areas of endeavour – sport and drama and music and more – making the school desirable to others tomorrow.
Transitional times
It’s hard to believe that there was a time when independent schools – in their lofty way – did not have a marketing manager or director or department. Indeed, I can remember tales of real antagonism towards the very idea of a school employing a professional marketer, as if employing a professional for the job were to acknowledge a school needed ‘a salesperson’.
In some ways, the idea of ‘selling’ a school needed to be ‘sold’ both to wary headteachers – ‘What do you mean I need a marketing officer? Are you saying I’m not good enough?’ – and to money-conscious governors – ‘How much? And give up a valuable teaching space to provide an office?’
In the early days, in a ‘needs must’ kind of way, quite unlikely but very willing people were drawn in to ‘marketing’. Little regard was given to their professional expertise with more interest in who they were – a housemaster’s wife with time on her hands, a governor’s wife. Even I, in my deputy head days, took an interest in marketing in a school which was – I thought – behind the curve in publicising its strengths and considerable history.
While I was trying to interest the local press in the school’s goings-on, a revolution was occurring in university education which created, among other ‘new’ things, degrees in marketing. The real McCoy. An academic course which would offer employers in any field trained and experienced marketing experts, offering the employer a skill set, vision and strategic experience which enables the education specialist to do her/his job full-time. At its simplest, it boils down to, ‘You make it, I’ll flog it…’ as a would-be schools marketing professional with a background in soap and detergents once cheerfully informed me.
Bridging the gap
One of the spurs to schools investing in professional marketers is the growth in overseas boarders. Out there, a very long way away, there are parents hungry for a British education for their children, and are unable to potter round the rolling English countryside having a quick look at three or four schools whose prospectuses and web presence they have liked.
Regular exhibitions for schools are held in locations such as Hong Kong and mainland China, in Russia, Germany and Africa. Increasingly, schools work with agents and companies such as William Clarence, the ‘brokers’ between parents and schools, helping to ensure a placement is the right one for both the child and the school, whatever initial language or cultural difficulties there may be.
For some headteachers, the arrival of the professional was a blessed relief. The notion of boosting boarding numbers by attending a schools’ fair in Hong Kong, for instance, was a complete anathema to some heads. No matter how rich – in all senses – such a source of excellent, bright, hard-working and musical pupils might be, it was very public ‘selling’. And great headteachers are not necessarily excellent salespeople. Overheard from an august lady at a headteachers’ conference, ‘I would not be seen lifting my skirts in the streets of Hong Kong!’ OK, that’s one way to look at it… but parents three thousand miles away are not necessarily education experts and they do need to know if yours will be the right school for their child. The marketing professional bridges the gap.
Our schools may have a long and much-respected history; today’s marketing team is about ensuring that they also have a bright future. And the most forward-looking schools have embraced the notion that marketing professionals in various shapes and forms are vital contributors to the school’s success. A director of marketing is a senior position on the school’s leadership team, enabling the academics to get on with their daily, classroom, exam room, extra-mural, sporting, musical and magical business.
If the final responsibility for recruiting the right number of the best pupils for an independent school rests with the Head, she or he will be all the more successful for the support and advice of a cracking marketing department, headed by a marketing professional, who might well say, ‘Give me the story, I will tell it. I’m a recruiter too – watch me.’
In this publication, you have a platform to tell us more: who are you, how did you get here, what makes the job worth doing and how do you know you’re doing it well? If this has looked like an article, it’s actually an invitation: we would love to hear your story. Email us at
info@schooladmissionsplus.com
Hilary Moriarty
has thirteen years’ experience as head or deputy in independent UK schools and eight years as National Director of the Boarding Schools’ Association. She is a schools inspector and an educational journalist.
