Marketing strategies for schools

Management Services, Aug 1999 by McNally, Jacqueline

Any fundamental discussion about marketing in schools must examine what factors have brought about the apotheosis of marketing. This involves examining how political legislation has impacted upon educational management to make marketing a much more prominent and overt activity in primary schools since the 1980's. Political pressures have undoubtedly attempted to provide the free market conditions necessary for marketing, but to what extent has increased competition actually been generated and has the quality of education offered in schools improved as a consequence? There can be no doubt that the term 'marketing' has become more prevalently used in primary schools but have political pressures actually had a significant impact on the emphasis placed on marketing strategies in primary schools? A fundamental element of this paper will be to examine the similarities and differences of educational marketing as opposed to business marketing. In reality are schools actually formulating marketing strategies and actively competing with other educational establishments or are they more concerned with reputation management and image manipulation?

The 1980 Education Act established two important prerequisites for marketing. It provided the political context for competition between schools and also demanded that potential customers were provided with the information, which would assist them to make more discerning judgements. The 1980 Education Act, section 26, allowed all parents a right to express a preference about which school they wished their child to attend. The fact that parents were allowed to enrol their child in a school in a different Local Authority from the one in which they resided undoubtedly augmented competition between Local Education Authorities. Authorities were required to describe their policies, processes and products in a prescribed manner, in order that customers could formulate accurate judgements about competing educational commodities. The introduction of assisted places in the private sector also intensified competition between the public and private organisations.

A salient section of the 1980 Act (section 15) concerned the fixing of a 'standard number' of places by the school this was based on the 1979-80 entry number. The LEA did however have the authority to determine an admission number 20% below this number, providing approval had been granted by the Secretary of State. This artificial restriction of admission numbers ensured that Local Education Authorities achieved some jurisdiction over the even distribution of pupil numbers throughout the schools. Unfortunately, it also meant that parental choice was frequently limited because the restriction of numbers in popular schools meant that parents were refused places in schools of their preference.

The 1988 Education Reform Act accentuated the competitive pressures through the introduction of additional market forces. Quality, diversity, choice, autonomy and accountability became key words in the period after the 1988 Education Reform Act. (White Paper, Choice and Diversity DfE 1992). The free market conditions of choice and competition were introduced into schools, thus increasing competition and adoption of marketing strategies by schools would improve the quality of education provided by individual schools. Bottery (1992) who maintains that in competing for pupils schools develop an efficiency and attractiveness, which will increase their quality, supports this view. Similarly, Ransom (Jenkins 1991) maintains that "a system which is accountable and responsive to the choices of individual customers of the service will improve in quality as a necessary consequence".

Sections 2&32 of the 1988 Education Reform Act concerning open enrolment, significantly intensified the power of parents as consumers. In order to facilitate the expansion of popular schools, schools were allowed to accept pupils up to their full physical capacity. Local Education Authorities could also no longer fix an admission limit which was lower than the standard number, as determined by the 1979-80 intake:

"26(1) The authority responsible for determining the arrangements for the admission of pupils to any county or voluntary schools shall not fix as the number of pupils in any relevant age group it is intended to admit to the School in any year a number which is less than the standard number."

The fact that schools could admit pupils up to their physical capacity meant that the government was actively encouraging increased competition between schools and, less popular schools were under additional pressure to adopt marketing strategies in order to maintain their viability.

The 1988 Education Reform Act, sections 33-51, also heralded the introduction of Local Financial Management (LMS). Financial delegation, giving schools greater autonomy in the control of their budgets commenced in 1990/91 and was gradually phased into schools from 1990 to 1994. The budget allocation distributed to each school is based on an agreed formula (Education Act 1988, section 38). All formula have as their main indices the number of pupils enrolled at the school. This is calculated from the numbers recorded on Form 7, which is completed by schools in January each year. The 1988 Education Reform Act required that at least 75% of the available budget be distributed according to the number and age of pupils. This is referred to as the `Age Weighted Pupil Unit' (AWPU). Schools are dependent upon attracting additional pupils in order to augment their financial income. Consequently, if pupil numbers increase, the school's funding will increase and in antithesis declining numbers will result in decreasing financial resources. As much as 98% of a school's budget is committed to premises, administration, nonteaching staff, teaching staff and learning resources (Davies and Ellison 1997).