Most schools that want more admissions start by buying more reach: another campaign, another directory upgrade, another open morning. If enquiries wait days for a reply, the fees page is hard to find or nobody follows up after a tour, the extra families drop out at the same points as everyone else. This playbook starts with the path instead. For the way Digital Space Co approaches that path, see how we work with schools.
The playbook follows a family through six stages (visibility, enquiry, visit, offer, enrolment and re-enrolment), shows how to find the stage where your school loses the most families, and sets out what to fix at each one, with a 90-day plan to put it into practice. It is written for Heads of Admissions and marketing officers at international and private schools in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and it applies to international schools elsewhere. Nothing here predicts a result, and nobody can honestly promise admissions numbers. What you control is how easily a family moves from one stage to the next.
Where are you losing families?
You are losing families at the stage where the drop to the next stage is largest compared with your own last admissions cycle. Find that stage before you spend more on reach: extra enquiries sent into a weak stage are lost in the same way.
Start with last cycle’s figures from your admissions system, by campus, year group and the source each family gave. Define each stage once, in writing, and keep the definitions for next year:
- Enquiry: a family contacts the school about a place, by any route.
- Visit: the family attends a tour or open morning, in person or online.
- Application: the family submits the school’s application.
- Offer: the school offers a place for a year group and start date.
- Enrolment: the family confirms the place on the school’s terms, such as a signed contract or a paid deposit.
- Re-enrolment: a current family confirms a place for next year.
Do not judge your figures against a conversion rate published by a vendor or another school. Definitions differ, and the useful comparison is your own school last year. If you cannot count a stage at all, for example because WhatsApp enquiries are never logged, fix that gap before anything else.
How to spot and fix a leak at each stage:
| Stage | Symptom | Check | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visibility | Few new enquiries, mostly from families who already knew the school | Search for your school’s name, curriculum and district on a phone: Google, Maps and the directories parents use | One accurate Maps profile per campus; fee, curriculum and admissions pages that match regulator data; claimed directory listings |
| Enquiry | Enquiries arrive but few families book a visit | Send a test enquiry through every route and time the personal reply | A named owner, a written reply standard, reply templates, and cover for weekends and breaks |
| Visit | Visits are booked but families do not attend, or attend and go quiet | Compare bookings with attendance; read what families received before and after | Confirmations and reminders; a personal follow-up the same week; one clear next step |
| Offer | Families apply, then hesitate or stop replying at the offer | Read the offer pack as a parent would: are fees, inclusions, deadlines and documents in one place? | One offer pack agreed with the Bursar; a deadline; a named contact |
| Enrolment | Offers are accepted but places are not confirmed on time | Track the days from offer to confirmed place and list what delays it | A document checklist sent with the offer; reminders before each deadline |
| Re-enrolment | Current families leave at year end, some without warning | Compare re-enrolment by year group with last year; note when families heard about fees and deadlines | Early, clear re-enrolment messages; a conversation with every family that has not confirmed |
Work on one or two stages at a time. The sections below take each stage in turn.
Visibility
Visibility means that a family looking for a school like yours finds it, and finds the same facts wherever it looks: on Google and Maps, in directories and regulator listings, and on your own website. A fee or rating that differs between those places costs trust before anyone has enquired.
One accurate Maps profile per campus
Google’s guidelines for Business Profiles allow a profile for a business with a physical location that customers can visit, and they say “Do not create more than one page for each location of your business”. For a school, that means one profile per campus and no duplicates. The same guidelines ask that the name reflect the business’s real-world name, so keywords that are not part of the school’s name, such as a district or a curriculum added to the end, do not belong in it.
For each campus, check:
- the category, address and map pin;
- the admissions office’s hours and a phone number that someone answers;
- a link to that campus’s admissions page rather than the homepage;
- recent photographs of the real campus, chosen under your safeguarding and photography policy;
- replies to reviews, written by someone who can speak for the school.
Directories and regulator listings
List every directory where your school appears, then claim or correct each listing. In Saudi Arabia, YaSchools describes its information on international and private schools as “data that has been updated by school officials themselves”, so an out-of-date listing there is usually the school’s to fix. In the UAE, the regulators publish their own school listings; the UAE section below covers them emirate by emirate.
Keep one source-of-truth sheet with what every listing needs: the school’s name as families know it, curriculum, year groups, fees by year group, rating as the regulator publishes it, address, admissions phone and admissions email. When a detail changes, update every listing from that sheet in the same week.
Your own fee, curriculum and admissions pages
Parents look for fees, curriculum, year groups, transport, term dates and how to apply. Give each its own page in plain text, not a PDF behind a form, and publish in the languages your families use, which for many schools means English and Arabic. Name year groups the way families do: KHDA’s directory, for example, pairs year groups with grades (Year 2 with Grade 1), which helps families moving between systems.
Every fact on these pages must agree with what the regulator publishes: the same rating and year, the same curriculum, the same fees. A parent who sees one fee on your site and another on a regulator listing has a reason to doubt both.
The enquiry: response and what to send
The enquiry is the stage a school controls most directly, and it is often the quickest to improve. Every enquiry needs an owner, a reply that answers the family’s question and offers one next step, and a record in your admissions system.
Principles
- Every route counts. Web forms, email, phone calls, WhatsApp, directory messages and social media messages are all enquiries. Log each one in the same place, with the date, the route and the source the family gives.
- One owner per enquiry, with a deputy. Someone is named on every enquiry until the family has booked a visit or said no.
- A written reply standard you can keep. We recommend an automatic acknowledgement at once that says what happens next, then a personal reply from the admissions team on the same working day wherever possible. Whatever standard you choose, measure against it every week.
- Cover for weekends and breaks. Families relocating from abroad may enquire while your office is closed, including over the summer. Say in the acknowledgement when the office reopens, and arrange cover during the longer breaks.
- The family’s language. Reply in the language the family wrote in where the school can, from an address someone reads.
- A short form. Ask for contact details, the year group, the intended start date and the campus or curriculum of interest. Do not ask for sensitive details about the child, documents or reports; those belong to the application, in the school’s own systems.
The same rule applies to the forms we build. Digital Space Co does not host or store pupil or parent data: admissions enquiry forms deliver directly to the school’s own email or CRM.
A reply checklist
Before a reply goes out, check that it:
- greets the parent by name and repeats the year group and start date they gave;
- answers their question in the opening lines;
- gives the fee for that year group, or links to the fees page;
- offers two or three visit dates, or a call, with a way to book;
- names the person writing and how to reach them directly;
- asks for documents when the family needs to prepare them, not before;
- is logged against the enquiry in your admissions system.
If the family does not reply, follow up once or twice with something useful, such as a new visit date or the answer to a question families often ask, then stop. A newsletter is not a follow-up.
The gap after a family presses submit is easy to neglect; our essay on why conversion begins after the form is sent makes the case for designing it as carefully as the page. Acknowledgements, visit reminders and follow-ups can run from your email platform: see email follow-up for admissions teams.
Measure three things against last cycle: the time to the personal reply, the share of enquiries answered within your standard, and the share of enquiries that book a visit.
Tours and open mornings
In our view the visit is where most applications are won or lost, so make booking easy, make attending easy and follow up in the same week.
- One page per event. Each open morning gets a page with the date and time, the year groups and curriculum it covers, what happens and for how long, where to arrive and park, and a short booking form. The anatomy of an open-morning booking page walks through each section and what the form should and should not ask.
- More than one way to visit. Offer open mornings and private tours, with times that suit working parents, and consider an online tour for families still abroad. If boys’ and girls’ sections run separate visits, say so on the booking page.
- Confirmation and a reminder. Send a confirmation at once with the date, time, arrival point and a calendar invitation, and a reminder a day or two before.
- Notes on the day. Whoever meets the family records the year group, start date and questions asked in the admissions system before the next visit starts.
- A follow-up the same week. Send a personal message that answers the questions the family asked, gives the fee for their year group, links to the application and names the deadline. Families who booked and did not come get another date, not silence.
- Dates that fit your calendar. Plan open mornings around your own term dates and publish them early, on your site and in your directory listings.
Measure bookings, attendance and applications from visiting families, event by event.
The offer and enrolment
A family that reaches an offer has chosen your school provisionally. The work now is to remove friction: one clear offer pack, fees and deadlines agreed with the Bursar, and documents requested early.
The offer pack should hold, in one place:
- the offer itself: year group, start date and campus;
- the fees for the year, what they include and what is charged separately, such as transport, uniform, meals or activities, and when payments fall due;
- the deadline to accept and what happens after it;
- any registration fee or deposit, with its terms exactly as the Bursar’s office applies them;
- the documents needed, and the date each is needed by;
- a named contact who can answer questions about any of the above.
Check the fee figures in the pack against the fees page on your website and against regulator and directory listings before the pack goes out. In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Education’s tuition fee regulations state that tuition is collected “according to the contract between the school and the parent”, so the contract, the offer and the fees page should say the same thing.
Then track every offer until the place is confirmed. Send reminders before each deadline, and call families who have gone quiet to ask what is holding them back; the answer may be a question about transport or a sibling’s place that you can settle on the phone. Tell waiting-list families where they stand and when you expect to know more.
Enrolment is also where re-enrolment starts. How quickly a new family’s questions are answered in its early weeks is part of the decision it makes next year.
Re-enrolment
Re-enrolment is admissions too: every family that stays is one you do not have to find again. The work is early, clear communication, and listening before families decide.
- Set the dates early. Fix the re-enrolment deadline, the date families hear next year’s fees and the date unconfirmed places are offered to new families, and publish all three. In Saudi Arabia, the tuition fee regulations require schools, once the Ministry approves their tuition, to notify parents “before the end of the academic year”, so plan the fee notice and the re-enrolment request together and leave families time to ask questions before the deadline.
- Say what is changing. Send one message with next year’s fees, any change to curriculum, timings or transport, the deadline, how to confirm and whom to talk to.
- Listen before the deadline. Ask for feedback at the points where families naturally reconsider, such as the move from primary to secondary, and talk to every family that has not confirmed a week before the deadline.
- Record why families leave. Separate relocation, which marketing cannot change, from reasons the school can act on, such as fees, transport or communication, and review the reasons by year group each year.
- Remind without pressure. Use a short reminder sequence before the deadline that stops as soon as the family confirms.
What are effective ways to promote a school in Saudi Arabia and the UAE?
Start with the places families already check: a Google Maps profile for each campus, complete directory listings, and fee, curriculum and admissions pages that match regulator data. Then promote specific events, such as open mornings, each with its own booking page, and make it easy for current families to invite friends. Add paid search and social media once the enquiry path can handle more enquiries, and judge each channel by the enrolments it produces rather than by clicks.
The six stages are the same everywhere. What changes by market is where families look, which official data your pages must match and the languages families search in. Set the paid and social mix from your own evidence: ask every family how it heard about the school, at enquiry and again at enrolment, review the answers each term, and move budget when the answers support it.
Saudi Arabia: private-national and international schools
The Ministry of Education’s tuition fee regulations cover every non-governmental school it licenses that “teaches Saudi or international curriculum”. Private-national schools, which the Ministry’s English pages call private schools, teach the national curriculum; international schools teach international curricula. Because the curricula differ, the two tend to attract different families, so write for the families you serve. In our view, a private-national school needs its fees, curriculum and admissions pages, directory listings and replies to work fully in Arabic as well as English. An international school serving several nationalities needs its curriculum, fees and year-group equivalents clear in English, and in Arabic wherever it serves Arabic-speaking families.
Term dates are the school’s own. The Ministry’s regulations for international and private schools let these schools set their own semester and holiday dates within the Ministry’s controls, with the plan approved by the Department of Education or the Global Education Office and announced to families at least two weeks before the school year starts. Families cannot work out your dates from the public calendar, so publish your term dates, open mornings and re-enrolment deadline on your website and in your directory listings.
On channels, one accurate Maps profile per campus and a correct YaSchools listing come before paid media. Search campaigns on your school’s name, curriculum and district then reach families who are already comparing. Choose social platforms by what your own families report, not by what schools in another market use.
The UAE: KHDA, ADEK and SPEA data
Each emirate’s regulator publishes school data that parents can use to compare schools, and your website, Maps profiles and directory listings must agree with it.
What each UAE regulator publishes about private schools (checked 30 September 2026):
| Emirate | Regulator | What it publishes | Where to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dubai | Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) | A school directory with each school’s overall rating and the year it applies to, its wellbeing and inclusion ratings, curriculum, grades, location, academic calendar, a fees fact sheet and a summary report; ratings run from Outstanding to Very weak, and parents can compare two to four schools side by side | KHDA school directory |
| Abu Dhabi | Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK) | School Performance Plaques that display ratings from Irtiqaa, a five-level rating under the UAE Unified School Inspection Framework, and from the National Identity Mark, a four-level rating, across all private schools in Abu Dhabi; a private schools page that links to a “Find Schools and Fees” search on Abu Dhabi’s TAMM portal | ADEK School Performance Plaques and ADEK private schools page |
| Sharjah | Sharjah Private Education Authority (SPEA) | A directory of private schools that parents can filter by annual fee range, area, curriculum, gender admission, grade and evaluation rating | SPEA directory of private schools |
Then match your own pages to these listings. In Dubai, state your rating exactly as KHDA does, with the year, and keep your fees and term dates consistent with what KHDA shows for your school. In Abu Dhabi, if you publish your ratings, publish both, labelled as ADEK labels them. In Sharjah, check that your listing’s fee range, curriculum and rating match your own pages.
Quote a rating exactly as the regulator publishes it, with its year, and never turn it into a ranking claim.
International schools elsewhere
The stages and the 90-day plan apply unchanged. Replace the Saudi and UAE layer with your own: the inspection body, accreditor or ministry whose published data parents check. Then make sure your pages agree with it.
How can a school promote enrolment? A 90-day plan
This plan fixes the path before scaling spend: two weeks of audit, eight weeks of fixes, then a campaign measured against your own last cycle. It is written for one campus; a group can run it campus by campus.
The 90-day plan by week:
| Weeks | Focus | What to do | Done when |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Baseline | Pull last cycle’s figures by stage, year group and source; send test enquiries through every route; search for each campus on a phone | Each stage has a written definition and a number |
| 3-4 | Visibility | Correct each campus’s Maps profile; claim and correct directory listings; align fee, curriculum and rating pages with regulator data | Every listing matches the source-of-truth sheet |
| 5-6 | Enquiry | Name owners and deputies; write the reply standard and templates; set up the acknowledgement; arrange weekend and break cover | Test enquiries get a personal reply within your standard |
| 7-8 | Visits | Build a booking page for the next open morning; set up confirmations and reminders; agree the follow-up message | Every visiting family gets a personal follow-up the same week |
| 9-10 | Offer and re-enrolment | Agree the offer pack and document checklist with the Bursar; set re-enrolment dates and messages | The offer pack and re-enrolment timeline are signed off |
| 11-12 | Campaign | Promote the next open morning through the channels your families report; track every booking by source | Bookings, attendance and applications are recorded by source |
| 13 | Review | Compare each stage with the same weeks last cycle; choose the next quarter’s focus | A one-page summary for the Head of School or the board |
Keep track with the one-page 90-day admissions checklist (PDF), and record targets by year group, your admissions calendar and your budget in the school marketing plan template.
Frequently asked questions
How do you increase enrolment (enrollment) in a school?
Find the stage where your school loses the most families compared with last year, fix it, then add reach. That usually means being easy to find on Google, Maps and directories, replying to every enquiry personally and promptly, following up every visit, making fees and deadlines clear at the offer, and treating re-enrolment as part of admissions. Measure each stage against your own last cycle rather than a published average.
How quickly should a school reply to an admissions enquiry?
Set a written reply standard you can keep, and measure it every week. We recommend an automatic acknowledgement at once that says what happens next, then a personal reply from the admissions team on the same working day wherever possible. Arrange cover for weekends and breaks, because families relocating from abroad may enquire while the office is closed, and say in the acknowledgement when it reopens.
How can a school increase admissions online?
Make the pages parents look for easy to find and read: fees, curriculum, year groups, transport, term dates and how to apply, in the languages your families use. Keep an accurate Maps profile for each campus and correct directory listings, let families book a visit online, and reply to online enquiries within a written standard. Online work ends at the enquiry; the reply and the visit decide what happens next.
How can a school attract more parents at admission time?
Be clear, quick and easy to visit. The school directories that KHDA publishes for Dubai and SPEA publishes for Sharjah show parents each school’s fees, curriculum and rating, so make those facts easy to find and consistent on your own pages. Answer enquiries personally, offer visit times that suit working parents, and follow up after each visit with answers to the questions the family asked.
What admissions fixes can a school make this week without new budget?
Four things can start this week: name an owner and a reply standard for every open enquiry, follow up every family that visited without applying, call every family that has not confirmed re-enrolment, and correct your Maps profiles and fees page. None of them needs new budget.
When should a school start marketing for next year’s intake?
Plan it now, whatever the month, by working back from your own dates: when next year’s fees are approved and announced, the re-enrolment deadline, when places are released to new families and your calendar of open mornings. Families who will join next year may be researching well before you open applications, so keep fees, term dates and visit booking current all year, not just during a campaign.
Where to go next
- Keep every campus easy to find on Google and Maps, with Business Profiles, reviews and citations handled through local SEO for school campuses.
- Give families fee, curriculum and admissions pages that answer their questions with our website packages, which include the build in the monthly plan.
- See pricing for schools for what each package costs and the campus counts it typically fits.
- Read how an engagement runs: remotely from Lahore, with a plan you approve before work starts and a report every month.