If you run a school in Delhi, you already know what January feels like. The phones in the admission office don’t stop, the gate guard is answering questions he shouldn’t have to, and parents are comparing your criteria with five other schools on a spreadsheet at home. Many of them will look at your website before they ever call you. Most school websites we see are not ready for that visit.
This is not about a fancy design. A parent filling nursery forms for six or eight schools wants a few specific things, fast, usually on a phone in the evening after work. If they can’t find them, they call. If they can’t get through, they get anxious, and an anxious parent forms a poor opinion of a school very quickly.
What parents are looking for right now
Ask anyone who works in a school admission office what parents want to know in January, and you will hear almost the same list:
- When can we get the form, and until when can we submit it?
- Is the form online or do we have to come to the school?
- What is the age requirement for nursery, and how is it counted?
- What are the admission criteria and points?
- Does our locality count as the neighbourhood?
- Which documents do we need to attach?
- What is the registration fee, and what is the fee after admission?
- When will the list come out, and where will it be displayed?
Every one of these questions can be answered on one clear page. Most schools have the answers in a circular somewhere. They just haven’t put them where a parent can find them.
Make one admission page, and link to it from the home page
The single most useful change is a dedicated nursery admission page. Call it something like “Nursery Admissions 2014-15” and put a big, clear link to it at the top of your home page. Not hidden under “About Us” or inside a news ticker that scrolls past too fast to read.
On that page, put the information in the order a parent needs it:
Important dates
Form availability, last date for submission, dates for the first and second lists, and the date by which fees must be paid. If dates are decided by the Directorate of Education schedule, say so, and update the page the same day anything changes. Put “Last updated on” with a date at the top. Parents trust a page more when they can see it is being maintained.
Criteria and points
Publish your criteria in a simple table or list, written the way you would explain it across a desk. If neighbourhood is measured by distance, explain how you measure it. A small map showing the distance bands around the school saves your office dozens of calls. If you give points for siblings or alumni, say exactly who counts.
Documents checklist
A plain list of what to attach: birth certificate, address proof, photographs, any proof needed for sibling or alumni points. Mention whether you need self-attested copies and how many. Small details like this are what parents get wrong, and what causes stress at the submission counter.
The form itself
If your form is online, link straight to it from this page. If it has to be bought from school, say which counter, which hours, and what it costs. If you offer a downloadable form, make sure it prints properly on A4 and isn’t a blurry scan.
Test it on a phone, not on the office computer
This is where many school sites fall down. They look fine on the large monitor in the principal’s office and are almost unusable on a phone. Text is tiny, menus don’t open, the admission notice is a 4 MB scanned PDF that won’t load on a weak signal.
Ask three or four parents you know, or teachers with young children, to open your site on their own phones and find the last date for submission. Time them. If it takes more than a minute, that is your answer.
Quick fixes that usually help:
- Put important text as text on the page, not inside an image or a PDF.
- Remove the long flash intro or slideshow before the home page loads, if your site still has one.
- Make the phone number of the admission office a proper number, so a parent can tap it to call.
- Keep PDFs for things that really need printing, like the form, and keep them small.
Keep the noticeboard and the website in step
When lists are announced, many schools put them up on the physical noticeboard first and the website hours or days later. Parents who can’t leave work to check the board are the ones who suffer. Try to publish both at the same time. If you are worried about the server slowing down when everyone checks at once, speak to your web developer or hosting company before the list date, not on the morning of.
Also make sure the list on the website is easy to read. A list sorted by registration number with no explanation of what to do next creates its own round of phone calls. Add two lines at the top: what being on the list means, and what the parent must do by when.
A good admission page doesn’t just reduce calls. It tells parents, before they have met anyone, that the school is organised.
What about Facebook?
Some schools now have a Facebook page, and some parents will ask questions there. That is fine, but the website should remain the official source. Use Facebook to point people to the admission page when dates are announced or updated, and reply to questions politely with a link to the right section. Don’t get drawn into long public arguments about the criteria. Invite the parent to call or visit.
After the admission season
When the rush is over, don’t delete the page. Update it to say admissions for this year are closed and when parents can expect information for next year. Families with younger children start looking a year in advance, and a page that has been around for a while, kept up to date, is also more likely to show up when someone searches for your school’s admission details.
Most of this work costs very little. It needs one person in the school who owns the admission page and updates it as soon as a decision is made. If you can find that person, January becomes a little quieter for everyone.
