MARKETING & ADMISSIONS
FROM OPEN DAYS TO
VIRTUAL SCHOOL EXPERIENCES Lockdown forces many schools to host their open days online with varying degrees of success. But has COVID- changed the rules for finding a school’s future students asks Sophie the Head of School Partnerships at VirtualSchoolExperiences.com
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OVID-19 has turned all our worlds upside down over the last nine-plus months, and like so many areas, education has had to adapt, fast. Notably, independent schools rose to the challenges posed by the virus, upping their game in digital delivery of classes, homework, and general support for their students. Open days were also quickly converted from a time-honoured inperson event, to virtual replicas, complete with Zoom calls, glossy videos, and even online 360-degree tours.
With a slate of vaccines looking likely to be approved, there’s finally light at the end of the pandemic tunnel – but will virtual open days disappear as lockdowns lift and life slowly gets closer to normal? There are three good reasons to think that virtual open days are here to stay, and moreover, that they’ll become an ever
more vital tool for first class independent schools to demonstrate their credentials to increasingly judicious parents.
Showcasing your school on your parents’ terms
Even before COVID-19, the digital world was disrupting traditional forms of choosing between different services. Like all of us, prospective parents looking at independent schools expect a wealth of information to be available to them when, where and in whatever format they prefer – and on any and all devices that they wish to make use of. User-generated content is expected as well in order to provide the sense of authenticity and ‘wordof-mouth’ recommendation that often informs discussion in-person. With all that extra content re uired, fitting it all into a traditional website without overwhelming a visitor can be a tall order. School marketing teams started off by responding to the challenges of the pandemic with basic open days on Zoom or Microsoft Teams and then gradually began to hone these resources into virtual school open experiences as their
ir a c oo e erience are de ni e e re no or ri no e re a rea a e c an in o en or o den recr i en and even or ndin e ri aff
HAILEYBURY CHAIRMAN, IAN HUNT
