Marketing

A good catchment?

Commissioning long-winded economic reports on your local demographics is costly, time-consuming and yet can prove fruitless. Stephen Martin-Scott sets out a simpler strategy to get to the information you actually need

Many schools waste money on demographic research. Not that investing in demographic research is a waste in itself, of course, it is just that money is often spent on the wrong things, a luxury that no school can afford.

There are voluminous reports on demographics produced for schools. Most may be interesting academic exercises and have even contained, perhaps hidden on pages 16, 21 and 37, relevant facts of value to the school.

But almost every one is far too long and is rarely focussed on delivering valuable data on which the client school can take action.

The key questions to ask are:
• what is the current catchment area of the school?
• how economically sound is that area in terms of the parental ability to pay fees?
• are pupil numbers in the catchment area likely to grow or decline? and
• if they are likely to grow, how reliable are the underlying drivers of that growth?

The answers
While recognising there may be one or two nuances, these are the four questions each school should be asking as part of any demographic research it is undertaking. It should not be about page upon page of national statistics of likely economic growth predicted by an investment bank for western Europe. Heads and governors alike will have a reasonable understanding of national and regional trends, certainly in sufficient detail to know whether, in essence, their area of the British economy is heading towards green, amber or red.

What is much more valuable is knowing the microeconomic projections within their region and, in greater detail, within the catchment of their school.

So how does one best answer those four questions? Taking the first two is relatively straightforward. It is almost always advantageous for schools to have a map of the home residences of their pupils plotted on a map.

It is most useful to plot differentially by the major year groupings, say pre-prep, prep and senior day pupils for, not unsurprisingly, distance from school usually grows according to the older the cohort.

This provides the actual, as opposed to the notional, catchment of both the school overall and each of the elements within it. This is really valuable information and will often debunk prior assumptions, as well as highlighting opportunities for additional recruitment or new bus routes.

Local demands
Once the catchment and the locations of current pupil families are identified, it is then a question of determining the relative wealth of those areas and, usually simultaneously, identifying the postcodes in which they live. The information on relative wealth is best expressed graphically, using different colours to identify different entities of families predicted to have household incomes within predetermined bounds. Setting those bounds is not as straightforward as it might seem. One school’s pauper may be another school’s middle-income earner.

For while a school with a predominantly rural catchment might still have a lower income band set at £40K, in other areas it may be necessary to have a £150Kplus band. By overlaying population data taken from the most recent national census with MOSAIC (or some other evaluating and codifying software), a school can gain valuable – and actionable – insights into its catchment.

Target data
You now know the numbers of your pupils who are living in areas of relative wealth and, occasionally, in less affluent areas. The emphasis here, of course, being on the word “relative”. While one might think that this is useful, but is essentially background data, in fact there are some unexpected advantages that can be gained.

Whether from a Charity Commission or bursarial perspective, it will prove interesting to total up the numbers of pupils living in areas of relative deprivation as well as noting how many on bursaries live in areas of relative affluence.

So why do you need the postcodes? There is no real cost involved and there are many reasons, some of which may only become apparent at a later date. Certainly, however, in a sophisticated admissions set-up it will allow a marginally differentiated follow-up of enquiries and, of proven value, it can provide useful parameters for direct marketing activity undertaken by the school at a future date.

Up or down?
Answering question three – whether pupil numbers are likely to grow or decline – is hugely important. National statistics won’t be relevant, but the regional and local ones. Actual numbers covered by year groups and up to certain age dates are accessible.

What most schools will value here, however, is not reams of pages of statistical facts and projections, but an intelligent interpretation of that data. Acquiring readily intelligible facts and opinions so that a school can have a good understanding of whether it is residing in an area of stasis, growth or decline – for each of its age groups – is of much greater value.

Careful analysis
The school is not in a position to affect any data received, but it does have an opportunity to consider expanding or contracting class sizes or the number of parallel classes ahead of time, at a predicted cost, planning the use of its physical assets ahead of change, rather than reactively.

And knowing in advance what is projected to happen also means that marketing activities can be focussed more closely on delivering appropriate pupils, for particular age groups, rather than simply “new pupils”.

If pupil numbers are likely to grow, which is true in a large number of areas despite what some doomsayers predict, how reliable are the underlying drivers of that growth? Again, it is not the national picture that helps, but the regional and local drivers of growth against which the reliability of that growth or decline has to be judged.

Finally, once a clearer picture, supported by reliable data is determined, and the main questions addressed and answered, how else can this research help a school? While there may be specific issues for each particular school, two additional uses will be relevant to most: defining or re-defining bus routes and undertaking very specific direct marketing.

Demographic research can be very valuable and it can help schools to make more informed decisions. But the school must know what it is trying to know.

Stephen Martin-Scott is managing partner of The Schools Marketing Partnership. He can be contacted via www.schoolsmarketing.com

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