5 STEPS TO BETTER STUDENT NUMBERS

With the campaign to increase per-student funding still ongoing, it is no surprise that colleges seem more focused than ever on improving their numbers.

There’s reason to be optimistic about the future of FE funding, given the likely increased dependence on the skills of the home-grown workforce post-Brexit and, frankly, the obvious injustice of per-student rates as they currently stand.

Meanwhile, running courses at less than full numbers only eats in to the already narrow margins for 16-18 delivery. Good marketing will bring much-needed cash by filling those gaps.

So here’s some tips based on my ten years of experience - if colleges want their September 2019 intake to be better than September 2018.

1 Don’t rely too heavily on schools to hand you your business. Have the confidence to sell the proposition directly to potential students and their parents - who deserve to hear the untarnished facts directly from colleges.

2 Keep things simple. College marketing budgets and staff resources tend to be modest. Stick to the activities which will have the greatest impact and do these well rather than over-stretching the resource.

3 Make life easy for applicants. Overly complicated and badly designed online application processes have a catastrophic effect on numbers.

4 Don’t flog dead courses. If courses are consistently running with unviable numbers, giving them more advertising spend will come at the cost of reduced applications for other provision as resources are diverted.

5 Have a strategy - and follow it!

Client colleges have always seen there numbers improve where these criteria have been been met, regardless of Ofsted grade. 

Steve Hook