Schools are the second home for children and parents always strive for the best opportunity their child can get. India has the maximum schools going children in lower and upper-middle-class families and schools suiting their requirements and financial abilities have been mushrooming all over.
For higher income groups, schools get admissions easily without any competition. The real challenge lies in the schools which cater to the average income group. Schools nowadays are adopting different novel ideas to increase student enrollment and stand out in the crowd and become industry leaders.
Here are a few ideas to bolster student enrollment and make changes to be included in the admission strategy;
- Maintain Digital Records:
Parents in today’s times search for the school’s website and look for the following things:
- Is the school performing well in Academics?
- Is the school doing well in co-curricular activities?
- Where are the student alumni of the school and their placements?
- Is the individual performance of the child given equal importance?
Schools should make it a point to highlight the achievements of the students on the school website. Parents are always attracted to schools which give stress on the holistic development of the child and give equal importance to academics and co-curricular activities.
To increase student enrollment, the website of the school should be updated regularly and all activities of the school should find a place on the website.
- Get Connected to Society :
To increase student enrollment, the school must get connected to society. A message should reach the masses that this school is doing something different and good values are being imparted to the kids. The activities which the school can carry out are
- Van Mahotsav: Planting trees in the nearby areas.
- Swachh Bharat Abhiyan: Taking out rallies and educating people about the importance of cleanliness
- Spread Awareness on Health and Nutrition: Taking out rallies and making people aware of the precautions to take during the rainy season to avoid water-borne diseases.
Organise health drives in rural areas and educate the people about the importance of basic nutrition for children
- Adult Education: Schools can organise free education for the lower strata adult population by taking the help of teachers and students.
By organising such drives, schools gain visibility across the society and word gets going within circles about the volunteering activities being undertaken at school. Parents also take pride and share the activities done in school with other parents. This can become a key decision-making preference and improve admissions to your school.
- Modern Infrastructure:
A key factor in the decision-making process is the infrastructure of the school. A parent is more likely to send his ward to a school which has the latest technology to impart education.
Here are some ways to modernise infrastructure and increase admissions to your school
- A state-of-the-art library: Today’s children are very inquisitive and always hungry for learning new concepts in a way different from conventional. A video library encourages the children to self-exploration and learn.
- Advanced Sports Facilities: If the school is having different varieties of sports like swimming, basketball, football and cricket, then parents are more likely to select it, as it saves expenditure and time outside the school on sports.
- Smart TVs in Classroom: Children nowadays are glued to television and watch cartoons. Schools can use this to impart educational concepts via cartoons and documentaries on Smart TV.
- Well Equipped Laboratories: Reading the experiments in books and learning them versus actually doing them and experiencing the results goes a long way in establishing core concepts in students. Parents are more likely to enrol their kids in schools with modern laboratories.
- Imparting Quality Education
All factors like extracurricular activities, sports and the latest technology can become irrelevant if the school is not imparting quality education to students. Schools should regularly take steps to make the learning process more enjoyable and productive. Following things schools should be undertaking to increase admissions :
- Better Teachers: Schools should be having proper recruitment drives for teachers and only qualified professionals must be employed to teach the students. Schools should organise workshops and training sessions where teachers are taught about the new ways of teaching and advances in the education sector.
- Good student-to-teacher ratio: Parents always look for options where classrooms are less crowded and teachers can give proper attention to students. A good ratio helps the teacher in:
- Knowing the individual weaknesses and strengths of the students.
- Students also are more eloquent about their doubts and difficulties in a smaller group.
Quality of education is the foremost and schools should make it a point to keep education as the priority to maintain their reputation and boost admissions.
Last but not the least, making use of print media for spreading awareness among the masses about the achievements of the students. This is an old technique but still relevant, as most people still do not depend on digital media to form an opinion. Newsletters, newspaper ads, and hoardings are old-school techniques that are still relevant for increasing admissions to schools.
When all these techniques are combined, schools will definitely see an increase in student enrollment and students get to enroll in their alma mater and reach the heights of success and enlightenment alongwith with a chance to pursue their hobbies and achieve accolades in sports.
