International schooling is complex market, requiring a multi-faceted high quality product offering. Novema conducts a series of annual surveys of parents to assess the choice drivers for international schooling in Singapore and other Asian Markets. Applying our insights of parents’ opinion & behaviour, we advise schools in their marketing and strategic planning. We report on key insights in a series of blogs…
International schooling has for a long time enjoyed a position of market strength, with more demand for schooling than supply of quality schools, as shown by their long waiting lists.
But the market is changing. With the reduction in expat numbers, more international schools opening, and existing schools taking on more capacity, we now see more supply relative to demand. Consequently, even the most sought after schools now undertake very active marketing campaigns and parent outreach programs. Positive word-of-mouth is the most powerful means of promoting your school, but based on the Novema New Parent Survey, parents go to a range of sources to help inform on their decisions.
Most commonly, it is online sources, e.g. internet searches, expat websites, comparison sites, and social media. Intermediaries play some role in finding the right school, e.g. 12% of parents had referred to a relocation agent or education specialist in their searches for schools.
Relatively few parents claim to have discovered their chosen school through advertising (5%), but generally people downplay the role of advertising in their decisions. We see that over 70% of parents recall advertising from schools during their searches and recall of the schools targeting them specifically tends to be higher. For example, UK aligned international schools record higher advertising recall among UK expats, and a similar pattern is seen with Europeans and Americans for schools targeting them.
Furthermore, advertising recall of their final chosen school is higher, showing that advertising is having a subliminal impact in their choices.
Most of the advertising recall of schools is via digital channels (73%), but offline advertising recall is also high at 43% for print and 33% for outdoor. Arguably the offline advertising is more effective as it is less cluttered – indeed when Novema asks parents for their specific recall of adverts, people tend to refer to those that they have seen within shopping malls, at MRT stations, or on buses.
The role of innovation in schooling:
When markets get competitive, the players need to get more innovative, and international schooling is no exception. Based on Novema’s New Parent Survey, from a list of 20 reasons for choosing the school, an ‘innovative approach’ to schooling was ranked fifth by parents. We also see an ‘innovative approach to learning’ as one of the main drivers of recommendation of schools.
As a multi-faceted product, there are many ways for schools to innovate. These can range from extensions to curricular, different learning techniques, or activities & facilities that are not usually available in other schools.
The Novema survey shows that 40% of parents would like to see more teaching of “STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics as a grouping) or “STEAM”, with the inclusion of arts. STEM & STEAM is not unique, many schools offer this, but there are ways of further developing curricular and Extra Curricular Activities (ECAs) to demonstrate a point of difference over other schools.
Style of teaching is another area where schools can innovate, and this is not limited to structured versus ‘discovery based’ learning, but also the use of technology in learning, the method of student assessment, and even the way classrooms and classes are designed to encourage more engagement and interaction between teachers and students.
Each of these can serve to differentiate one school over another, but from our Mystery Inquirer program, we often see that the admissions officers find it hard to articulate how their school is different from others. These differences can be summed up in a school motto or mission statement, but even here staff often forget what these are!
Article written by Piers Lee, Managing Director of Novema Pte Ltd. Contact: info@novema-research.com
