September 2010

Julie Booth looks at how a management information system can have a big impact on improving the administration and learning in a school.

With the current economic climate as a backdrop, the pressure on independent schools to attract good pupils, hold on to them and deliver even better results than before has become stronger. That means more work to market the school to parents, closer attention on each pupil’s achievement and a tighter control over budgets than we have experienced in recent years.

And yet at the heart of virtually every school is a management information system (MIS), which in the majority of establishments, could be harnessed more effectively to provide invaluable help in these stressful times. If a school is using their MIS as a tool to record a child’s address information, attendance and exam results, then it is likely they are simply not making the most of their investment in the technology. Clever schools, however, are putting their MIS to work before pupils even arrive at the gate and making it work well beyond the confines of a glorified filing system.

More effective marketing
It can be very difficult to accurately gauge the effectiveness of a marketing strategy. Schools advertise, invest in a great website and attend exhibitions to raise their profile but it is difficult to know if all these activities are achieving the results required.

The MIS can become a valuable sales and marketing tool. By recording the information on how a promotion budget is spent and then cross referencing the number of enquiries generated from each activity, schools can discover what sort of marketing works for them.

A log of what percentage of pupils then went on to sit the entrance exam and take up a place is also possible for each marketing activity. Knowing which exhibitions or adverts lead to paying pupils rather than the inconsequential enquiries means you can focus your budget on those activities with the greatest return.

Sir William Perkins’s School in Surrey is an all girls’ day school with 570 pupils aged eleven to eighteen. Sheila Hallsworth, the school’s Director of Communications and Admissions, sees the MIS as central to pupil recruitment.

“When a prospective parent contacts the school, we add their details directly into our MIS, as well as how they found out about Sir William Perkins. Once the parents’ details are entered, we produce a covering letter to send with the prospectus. This is a professional start to our communication with parents as the letters follow the school’s branding. The reports [from the MIS] enable analysis of the value of marketing communication, for example, promotions in publications and directories, open days and even word of mouth,” she says.

Knowing where improvements need to be made
Competition from other independent schools, the local grammar or perhaps a new Michael Gove inspired Academy, means that once pupils have been successfully attracted to the school, the pressure to get the best results from them begins in earnest.

An MIS allows teachers to easily see actual performance against targets so action can be taken quickly for those pupils falling behind. Encouragement or support can be offered where it is needed the most to drive improvement before an issue becomes too deep to address quickly.

“We have been using the data that is generated from students’ assessment results to uncover trends of improvement or decline for every child, including the high flyers and underachievers, so that appropriate praise or support can be given to anyone who deserves it,” says James Moyle, Curriculum Co-ordinator, Royal High School in Bath. “This would have been an incredibly time-consuming task without the use of our MIS into which staff record all key student data.”