March 2024
Helping businesses to grow using data-driven marketing insights and a splash of creativity!
This month we look at...
Academic attainment during Covid - today the Education Policy Institute and Renaissance published findings of their study that looked at assessment outcomes for 6 million pupils between 2022 and 2023.
Lead scoring - have you considered lead scoring for independent schools? Leading ed-tech and commercial organisations use lead scoring to focus marketing and sales team efforts, this is also useful for schools.
Website audits for maintained sector schools - does your website meet Ofsted requirements? Ofsted looks at 21 areas of website content (depending on the type of school) to ensure compliance. If you get a call about an inspection, will your website be up to date?
Happy reading!
Lucy
Academic Attainment During Covid
Today the Education Policy Institute and Renaissance published findings of their study looking at the assessment outcomes for 6 million pupils between 2022 and 2023, during the Covid pandemic. Findings show discrepancies across gender, location, SEN, primary and secondary education, and subjects.
Results in secondary education for girls’ reading have fallen narrowing the gap between girls and boys. Attainment for both girls and boys in secondary maths has fallen.
Geographically, pupils in London saw the best improvement. Students in Yorkshire and Humber, the lowest performing region, saw pupils 4.3 months behind those in London in primary school reading.
Some current news articles and the EPI report are on the links below.
The Independent, 18 March 24 | Girls Suffered More Academically During Covid
TES 18 March 24 | Girls’ Reading and Maths Hit Harder by Covid
Have you thought about lead scoring for independent schools?
Lead scoring for independent schools
When a prospective family completes an enquiry form they become a ‘lead’.
Of course, a lead is a family you get to know through the admissions process and beyond. Data and analysis cannot replace important conversations but they can help focus effort on families who meet the target audience profile for your school.
If you market an independent school, there is a huge amount within the role, in essence, marketing activities are there to create interest in the school amongst the right target audience, and this interest is captured as leads.
Marketing generates 300 leads, which should admissions focus on?
How will they know which leads are the highest priority?
This is where lead scoring comes in.
Based on actions taken by prospective families, you can apply a score to each action along the customer journey. This will build up a picture for each family.
Each person's customer journey will be slightly different.
By scoring key activities you can highlight the most interested parties and know where to focus your time and energy. You can attribute a numerical value to key customer journey points.
Colour coding can also be applied using the total score, for example:
Red (0-20) / Amber (21-49) / Green (50+)
This makes it easy to see which leads score most highly as in the simplified example below.
If you are lucky enough to have a CRM like HubSpot, Salesforce, or another, they can manage lead scoring. They also use AI to deliver predictive lead scoring that will predict which leads will convert based on known data and previous conversions.
If you don’t have a CRM, you can still score leads using filtering functionalities within your MIS - filtering for known activities such as open-day attendance.
For more information, see the links below:
Salesforce Blog, Dec 23 | Predictive Lead Scoring and AI is a Game Changer
HubSpot Blog, Aug 22 | How to Use Data to Calculate a Basic Lead Score
If Ofsted calls, will your school website be ready?
Did you know Ofsted assesses up to 21 areas of website content for maintained sector schools (depending on school type - primary, secondary, etc) to determine if it meets their criteria?
This includes -
various reports
exam results
financial information
governor details
SEND information
and much more...
When you get a call from Ofsted you typically have a few days until the inspection. Teaching and learning come first and schools are busy so the website can easily slip down the list of priorities.
It is, however, the first call for people researching schools and often the beginning of the customer journey. Keeping content current and easy whether you have an inspection looming or not is a good idea.
With our comprehensive website audit framework, you can see a rating for each item at a glance and any actions that need to be taken removing the task of going through all the required details.
For more information, see the link below:
Department for Education, April 23 | What maintained Schools Must Publish Online
Flexible Marketing Solutions
School budgets have been squeezed and are continuing to be so. Often schools are not in a position to have the luxury of full-time marketing support. This can also be true for ed-tech start-ups that may not be able to make a full-time marketing hire early on.
We offer flexible, day-rate support and can assist with one-off projects, longer projects, or just one day of support.
If you need any of the following, please be in touch.
Marketing strategy
Branding
Communications
Case studies
Customer journey mapping
Lead management
Website audits