Episode 9: 8 Strategies To Increase Student Retention That Actually Work

In the Summer of 2014, our school was in the midst of a retention crisis.

We had families leaving for local public schools, local private schools and some families that were moving out of the city to have their children attend suburban public schools.

But then we got to work.

By the summer of 2015, we had decreased our attrition rate by 35%. By the spring of 2016, our parent survey results were off the charts with an overall level of parent satisfaction of 97.75%. By the summer of 2016, our retention rate school-wide was over 90% In fact, the turnaround was so profound, we were invited to speak at the National Jewish Day School Conference in February 2017. My HOS, Admissions Director, Marketing Director and I traveled to Chicago to talk about what we did to turn things around so quickly.

How did we go from a CRISIS in the summer of 2014 to a 97% parent satisfaction rate in spring 2016 and a 90% retention rate in summer 2016? On today’s episode of The Private School Leader Podcast, I am going to tell you EXACTLY what we did and give you the 8 ways to increase student retention that ACTUALLY WORK.

Those 8 strategies are: 1) Be Proactive, 2) Ask, ask then study the data, 3) Identify “Decision Years”, 4) Treat every family like a new family, 5) Create a “culture of anticipation” and “paint a climactic scene”, 6) Surprise and Delight, 7) Say Goodbye, 8) Retention is everyone’s responsibility

Research shows that it costs 7 times more resources (money, time, advertising, etc.) to find and enroll a new student than to keep an existing student. If you use these 8 strategies, you will keep the students that you have worked so hard to get.

I know that you are SUPER busy, so when you are driving to school, working out or running errands, pop in those earbuds and listen. I hope that you will be motivated and inspired as you serve your school!

You can head over to www.theprivateschoolleader.com/resources to check out all of the free resources available to you. Show notes can be found at www.theprivateschoolleader.com/episode9 Please follow, rate and review this podcast. The rating helps this podcast to be heard by more leaders and your review gives me valuable feedback so that I can better serve you in future episodes. If you got value from this episode, please text the link to an aspiring leader at your school. Thanks!