The high cost of solving the wrong enrolment problem
The instinct to refine, polish and elevate what your school offers is part of what makes you an effective Head. But that instinct can backfire when you fix things that are not broken. Especially in enrolments – reality isn’t the only truth that matters. Perception is equally powerful.
Practitioners of behavioural insight in marketing, like Rory Sutherland,[i] and philosophers such as Ludwig von Mises, remind us that value does not exist in a vacuum. It is shaped by both product and context.[ii] In a school, that context is often the enrolment experience, and if it clashes with the quality of the core education on offer, perception suffers, regardless of reality.
If prospective parents believe your school is underwhelming, even when it is objectively high performing, your reality is irrelevant. Trying to perfect the product before addressing the perception is like upgrading the food in a restaurant that smells of sewage. Until the context is right, the quality will not be recognised.
The danger of misdirected effort
The real risk lies in expending effort where there is already excellence. Your school may spend significant time and resources enhancing programs, adding offerings or modernising classrooms. Meanwhile, prospective families remain unaware or unconvinced. The reality is strong but the perception is weak. And enrolments stall.
This is a leadership blind spot. If your reality is significantly better than public perception, the smarter strategic move is not to improve reality further, but to close the perception gap.
Lessons from a post office
The British postal service once boasted a 98% success rate for delivering first-class mail the next day. Yet, internal leaders decided this was not good enough and invested heavily to increase it to 99%. The effort nearly broke the organisation. At the same time, public perception estimated delivery success at only 50 to 60%.
The real problem was not performance. It was misunderstanding. Leaders fixed what was already working instead of correcting the story being told. They chased technical improvement when the strategic advantage lay in narrative clarity.
Schools can fall into the same trap and often invest in innovation or upgrades, assuming they will drive enrolment. But if families do not know, feel or believe in the excellence already present, the risk is the investment goes unnoticed. A more effective path would have been to communicate the 98% success rate and reframe it in ways that felt impressive to the public.
The behavioural science behind enrolment decisions
Parents do not make school decisions in spreadsheets and CRMs. They make them in stories. Their frame of reference is built through emotion, anecdote and perceived signals of quality. An unreturned call or a disinterested tour guide can undo years of curriculum development. A friend’s dismissive comment about the school can outweigh your latest strategic plan.
Perception is a reality of its own. Behavioural economists remind us that context shapes value. In marketing terms, if the perceived value of your school is lower than its actual value, then your strategic priority is clear: correct the perception.
Misalignment is costly. Heads who ignore perception are often surprised when enrolment numbers do not respond to program investments. The product is excellent, but the experience around it is unclear, inconsistent or invisible.
Diagnosing your perception gap
The first step is awareness. Heads can begin by asking hard questions:
- Do families understand and value what we do best?
- Are we trying to fix something parents are already satisfied with?
- Are we ignoring areas that shape first impressions?
- Have we clearly articulated our strengths in parent-facing channels?
- Is our enrolment experience as strong as our academic program?
Often, the answers reveal that the enrolment team is working uphill. The school may be trying to attract families with substance but doing so in a way that is stylistically disconnected or emotionally tone-deaf.
Changing perception is not a marketing gimmick. It is about building coherence between what you offer and what families believe you offer.
The cost of getting it backwards
When you invest in improving the wrong things, you lose more than money. You risk confusing your team, weakening direction and demoralising staff whose efforts go under-recognised.
Getting it backwards also means competing on the wrong terms. If another school is louder or clearer about their offering, even if it is less compelling, they may win in the market of perception. And that’s where enrolment decisions are made.
How to close the gap
Correcting the perception gap begins with choosing a better frame of reference. This means:
- Benchmarking externally, not just internally: Your school may be performing better than local competitors on several fronts. Make that visible.
- Telling your story with clarity: Translate your academic strengths into parent-relevant benefits. Avoid jargon. Use plain language.
- Auditing your enrolment touchpoints: Every interaction is a moment to affirm your school’s promise. From the website to the car park, ask what story is being told.
- Training your front line: Receptionists, tour guides and enrolments officers must understand and express your school’s unique value. The context they create can outweigh brochures and banners.
- Leveraging peer influence: Testimonials, word-of-mouth and parent advocates shape perception faster than official messaging. Make it easy for your advocates to share meaningful stories.
The goal isn’t manipulation. It’s alignment. When your school’s reality and its perceived value move closer together, enrolment decisions become easier for families and more rewarding for your team.
Fix the floor before the food
Rory Sutherland puts it plainly: if you serve Michelin-starred food in a room that smells, you are wasting your effort. The greatest improvement you can make isn’t to the food. It’s to the context in which it’s experienced.
Parents don’t enrol because of curriculum.[iii] They enrol because of the story they believe about your school. If that story doesn’t match your reality, fix the story first.
Strategic leadership in enrolments means knowing what to fix and when. That begins with knowing what your families believe.
insight applied
- Strong reality is wasted without strong perception; improving perception is often the smarter first move.
- Parents act on signals, not spreadsheets.
- Strategic clarity comes from narrative alignment.
- Fix enrolment context before refining content.
[i] Rory Sutherland is Vice Chairman at Ogilvy & Mather, a global advertising, marketing and public relations agency, and an enthusiastic practitioner of behavioural science.
[ii] von Mises, L. (1998). Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Mises Institute.
[iii] Okay, sometimes, in exceptional circumstances, parents do enrol based on curriculum.