The primary school admissions year, on one page
What to do each month to fill your Reception class, and the two dates that decide it. Free, no sign-up, designed to be printed and put on the wall.
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Why it starts in September
Most school calendars tell you when World Book Day is. You already know when World Book Day is.
This one runs September to August, because that's how a school year works — and every month tells you the admissions job that goes with it. Posters into nurseries in September. Say the deadline out loud in November. Photograph everything at the summer fair, because that's next year's campaign.
The point is that the work which fills a Reception class isn't a season. It runs all year, and most of it happens months before the deadline that everyone remembers.
Applications close. Everything before it is about being seen. There is no useful marketing after it.
National offer day. Welcoming the families who chose you is the most persuasive thing the families who didn't will see all year.
Also on it
Five things worth knowing, each of which came out of running these campaigns or out of published research: what an empty Reception place actually costs, where parents ranked Ofsted when somebody asked them properly, which sources they said were most useful, the deadline that catches out your own nursery families, and the free thing sitting on your Ofsted page that fewer than one parent in twenty has ever filled in.
The guides behind it
Everything we know about marketing a primary school is covered in eighteen articles — free, and nothing to sign up for.
Read the guides →The Marketing Health Check
If you'd like someone to look at your school the way a prospective parent does, it takes fifteen minutes and it's free.
Take a look →