Is Our Child Getting the Best?
4 min read
By Stuart Robinson
What Your School's Unique Value Proposition Promises Parents?
It’s not uncommon for parents to question the value of their child’s education. They often pay considerable fees with the vexatious hope that their investment will provide a better future for their children.
If it didn’t, private schools wouldn’t exist.
These queries often surface when the usual suspects trigger them: school fees increase, a favourite teacher or principal leaves, or the aquatic project has been put on hold… again.
To say you’re the best at [fill in the renowned activity you desire here] may hold water with the community for some time. However, the reckoning beckons when parents discover their students haven’t obtained that Holy Grail advantage. What they were led to believe was a marketing fallacy: hype invented to woo parents but do little else.
Sometimes, it's too easy for schools to promise the world and not deliver it.
Put yourself in the shoes of a prospective parent. As you start to consider the endless possibilities for your child – and there are many – you try to rationalise the differences as best you can.
And your ultimate source of information is word of mouth. Recommendations from friends or family that help you piece together the disparate conceptual titbits, albeit couched in emotive speak, may get you over the line.
But if a school truly knows its identity, it should have no issue expressing its value proposition in clear, simple terms.
What is your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
A unique value proposition is best defined as the value of your service to parents versus the cost of delivering it. Sure, the ultimate service may be one teacher for every child, but it's unlikely that parents will see the value in paying the cost required to deliver that.
You might consider your school to offer incredible value to parents, and they should be lucky to have a place there. But it doesn’t matter what you think your school's value is; it matters what parents think.
I’ve seen schools that ignored the value of their offering—to their detriment. It wasn’t until enrolments began dwindling that they decided to act. Unfortunately, as we learned in my recent article How Your School Can Benefit from the Flywheel Effect, quick fixes usually fail.
Their quick fix was to reduce annual tuition fees, hoping this would stop the bleeding. Instead, it had the opposite effect.
This is why your school’s UVP is so important.
How do Leaders Develop Their School’s Value Proposition?
In his book This Is Marketing, Seth Godin offers a valuable tool for leaders to deduce their school’s value proposition. Effectively, it’s an X and Y axis, with the extreme values demonstrating the two most important factors you believe set your school apart.
Once you’ve plotted your school in the top right corner, judiciously allot your competitor schools against those two metrics.
If you find other schools in similar proximity to your plotted position, your value proposition is likely less unique than you initially thought.
So, change the value metrics and see how your competitors compare to the new values. Keep testing until you can ascertain the values you rank highly for, which parents also esteem.
What do parents value from schools?
School Choice: A Research Report 2021 authored by Independent Schools Australia highlights several vital points parents value.
- Children to be happy, well-rounded, and prepared for employment
- The ability to think for themselves and possess a curious love of learning
- Their child receives individual attention
- Educationally excellent with good, accountable teachers
- Good facilities
- A supportive and caring environment
- Superb school rankings
- Reputation on social media
- Values and beliefs
- Affordability
It’s not an exhaustive list, and these values are not weighted evenly. Value expectations reside on a spectrum. For example, some parents favour affordability over school rankings, while others are more concerned with a synergy of values and beliefs.
Furthermore, some of these values are mutually exclusive; it may not be possible to remain affordable for most parents while providing an excellent curriculum with highly regarded teachers.
The Composition of a UVP
It’s tantalisingly easy to pick obvious extreme values. You’re local or a girls/boys/co-ed school. Maybe you operate from a faith basis.
While parents perceive these attributes as valuable, they’re not usually distinguishing characteristics. Consider the many local schools in your vicinity. Or those that cater to a single demographic.
A unique value proposition harnesses what is truly inimitable about your school.
So, a UVP dives deep into the school’s psyche and culture to unlock why your school is set apart.
Your “Something we're really good at” and “Something else we’re really good at” should be a quadrant where only your school sits. If you plot your competitors in the same space, you might need to think deeper.
When you’ve identified your UVP, competitor schools should sit in the other three quadrants.
To begin composing your value proposition, start asking yourself the following questions:
- As a school leader, what inspires your passions within this school?
- What brings joy to your students?
- What two words could summarise your best successes?
- When have you received the most positive feedback from parents?
- How does your local community define your school?
Your answers should lead you to more questions; hopefully, your responses will become deeper and more insightful. They should cut into the fabric of your school’s offering as precisely as a surgical knife.
After all the exploration, you should be able to define something you’re really good at succinctly.
Do Schools Need to be Different?
A common question I receive when speaking with educators is, does our school need to be different?
In essence, all schools have considerable commonality. Ignoring the many forms of government compliance, schools operate quite equally. They have students, teachers, classes, and often extra-curricular activities. Even the school holidays aren’t too dissimilar.
Back to my initial argument, if schools didn’t need to be different, private schools wouldn’t exist.
Schools' differences are their strengths. They determine their mission and how they will provide value to society through their very existence.
Conclusion
In conclusion, schools should seek to understand their unique value proposition and communicate effectively. Those who succeed in doing so will benefit from a more discerning public.
Stuart Robinson
Stuart Robinson: MBA, 25+ years in school management. Business degree, AICD graduate. Founder and author sharing expertise in educational leadership, strategy, and financial management.