Referral is a means of increasing patronage in any business. Referral is unrealistic if products are below quality. This is the reality in all businesses, even a school business.
A school could have modern teaching and learning facilities in empty classes. The school could expend resources on publicity, using social media; yet, it battles a stunted population growth. In a school business, the means of survival is the population. UNESCO never recommends ratio 1:10. You know what that means. That body understands the role of population in a school. Teachers will not teach facilities.
What we need to boost the population growth is a selling point. We need a self-assessment to identify our selling point.
The teacher’s finesse is a unique selling point. We need to have an understanding of this finesse. It goes beyond mastery of the subject matter. The teacher’s finesse is the pedagogic skills and styles employed in all the teaching and learning activities in the school. To increase our patronage, we must work on the following.
Literacy: How long does it take your students to acquire the ability to read and write? Parents who labour assiduously to pay the humongous school fee have no patience to welcome flimsy excuses over their kids’ inability to read and write. Teachers have a professional role to play. Parents ask questions when they meet children from low-grade schools reading verses from the Bible during a church service or at a gathering of scholars. That school already has a referral.
Communication Skill: Another marketing strategy schools adopt is the communication skill of both teachers and students. Parents are enamoured of schools where teachers and students speak in the appropriate diction. Therefore, the onus lies on us teachers improve our communication skill and assist our students to improve theirs.
Quality Teaching:
Unlike those days that only few parents could interpret their children’s notes, today’s parents are learned, even more sophisticated than we do. There are various means of verifying all the information given to their children at school. That is why it is unprofessional of a teacher to give false information. When it becomes characteristic of a teacher to impart wrong knowledge to the students, it impeaches both the standard and quality of the school. That is minus one, if not four.
Victory in External Competitions:
The landmark performance of a school at an external competition is an evaluation of the teachers’ performance. Schools that often emerge victoriously in competitions such as Cowbellpedia, NTA’s Take A Step and Spelling Bee, record increase in their patronage. In order to excel, teachers have a monumental role to play.
Co-curricular Activities:
All work no plays makes Jack a dull boy. There are school’s clients who do not so much value academic activities. They are always energetic whenever a party is organised by the school. They are ever ready to expend every bit of their monetary strengths on any of the school’s programmes. The school has to identify and satisfy. Most times they invite their friends the school’s events. That is plus one if not four.
