Your school does not need to buy all sorts of fake awards and certifications from bogus platforms in a hope to grow its brand or revenue.
You just need to work upon the following four things to grow your School.
1. Finalize your School Growth Goals – What do you want to achieve with your school and by when?
2. School Growth Planning – What things do you want to do to grow your school?
3. School Growth Strategy – How do you want to grow your school?
4. School Growth Action Plan – Sequence of activities
Growth Goals for a School
What do you want to achieve with your school and by when?
To define the growth goals, first, you have to define the meaning of school growth for yourself.
Look at the following framework in the image
While you may choose your goals yourself, here is a quick help to choose your goals
You just need to identify, which type of school you are out of the following three types and you will know your goals
Sinking School
If you are an independent K12 school that has less than 250 students (irrespective of the fee you charge),
and if your school is struggling to meet ends
If you are observing an increasing number of Transfer certificates and maybe your students are also not paying fees on time.
If it looks like you need emergency support, we call you a Sinking School.
and your definition of school growth right now would simply be all-around increased enrollment. (Feel free to ask us for help if you want)
Confused School
At this level, your school may ideally have 350 to 1000 students and you think your school has a decent brand
but the numbers are not increasing substantially.
You can observe that your good teachers are leaving
and there is no clear-cut defined Word of Mouth campaign
But you are still not ready to accept all these indications
and still believe, ‘Oh it is just the market cycle, it will be fine by the next year’.
We assure you that in just a couple of years, you would be thinking of selling this school
Do not get confused, here your focus should be Brand Growth along with additional revenues
Visionary School
At this level, your student enrollment must be more than 350 and you must be observing a regular growth in numbers year on year.
Your parenting community is appreciating you like anything
But deep inside you, you know, we are far behind what we want to achieve
Your focus totally should be on additional revenues i,e additional programs to delight parents at your school at an extra cost. (ask us for help, if you want)
Now when your School growth goal is done
It is time to develop a School Growth Plan
Now is the time to develop a School Growth Plan to achieve that.
School Growth Plan
What things do you want to do to grow your school?
To make a school growth plan, first, you should understand that there are four kinds of innovation that can be implemented in a school namely
- Systems Innovation – This is all about thinking and improving your SOPs, Documentation, Data Flow, Measurements, Facilities, etc
- People Innovation – This is all about making people ready to work in a way that you want them to work. This part here is the key to building the culture of your school
- Learning Innovation This is all about, how will you create a conducive environment for learning. Here you differentiate and implement the learning at your school from all others
- Brand Communication Innovation This is all about letting your parenting community be updated about what your school is up to.
Now in order to make a School Growth Plan you need to identify that out of the following 8 things, what things you want to do at which step
Note – It is just an indicative process. We strongly recommend you improvise and improve, and share your thoughts with us in the comments.
- Choose your Unique Positioning – When you are starting the innovation process, choosing and finalsing your brand positioning is of utmost importance. So what kind of school do you want to make? Will it be a sports-based school, will it be Montessori, will it be a military education school or will it be a futuristic education school? A lot of later steps are dependent on this step. (Brand Communication Innovation)
- Infrastructure and Supplies Innovation – Let’s say you are a School under a Tree, even then you cannot run it without that tree and maybe Board and Chalk and notebooks, etc. So the first focus should be to innovate your existing infrastructure. with existing people and resources (Systems Innovation)
- Data Flow Optimisation and Automation – Now when you have a bare minimum infrastructure, you would need to optimize the work of teachers and staff. More time for them is proportional to more innovation at school and Automation will help immensely. (Systems Innovation)
- Define, Convey and Implement your desired school culture to your teachers and staff – This is I think the most critical step. Most schools fail here. You should not be dependent upon the capability of individual teachers, you should rather make well-laid-out procedures for them to follow. (People Innovation)
- Classroom Innovation – Now your teachers have more time and they do understand, what you want from them. It is time that you put a mechanism that binds your teachers to innovate (Learning Innovation)
- Tech Labs Innovation – Now you are all set to start developing more exposure for your students and teachers in technology labs (Learning Innovation)
- Learning Beyond Classroom Innovation – With the right exposure in the classrooms and Labs, now your students and teachers are ready to learn beyond school. Think about MOOCS, think about LMS, and then think about excursions, student exchanges and field trips, and more (Learning Innovation)
- Involve Parents – This is essentially a very important step in the whole cycle. (Brand Communication Innovation)
Once you have identified what things are in your focus for the coming year out of these 8 steps, you may start defining your school growth strategy.
School Growth Strategy
How do you want to grow your school?
Strategy is nothing but a choice.
You can do any number of things to grow your school.
You can put money
in advertising,
or in marketing collateral,
or in hiring the best available teachers,
or you may improve your services (like transportation)
or you can improve your infrastructure to an all-new height
and there can be many more options to choose from. You may opt for a few things which are appropriate for you, your budget, and your resources
Almost no one do all the things
We always have to make choices.
If you can do 3 things at max and you have 12 options to choose from, making this choice is called the strategy
From the previous step, you may have already made a list of things that you want to do in the coming session
Now decide, a very smaller number of things that you will actually execute in the stipulated time
and that’s it
This choice is your strategy.
Likewise do build a communication strategy separately and a Word of Mouth campaign.
School Growth Action Plan
The Action Plan is a deeper thing where you make a step-by-step execution plan for your strategy.
We are also looking for innovative School Leaders who would like to share their wisdom with others through School Innovation Talks. Coming soon . . .