Professional Development

Professional Development >> Admissions Workshop

By Angela Reilly, Hong Kong Academy

To warm up for the EARCOS Leadership, a group of Admissions, Marketing and Communications personnel from International Schools in the EARCOS region got together for a workshop hosted by International School Kuala Lumpur. The aim to was learn more about how we can work together to promote school growth and advancement. International schools are relying upon income from tuition more and more and it is vital that we understand who our mission aligned families are, where to find them, how to appeal, what we need to show them to get them to fall in love with the school and why they should choose our school above all others.

Norma Hudson, ISKL Head of School and Julia Love, Admission Director at ISKL

Valerie Koo from School Choice International presented us with ‘21st Century Expat Families’ and helped us to understand and explore the changing face of the modern expat (and their expat packages). This knowledge can help us to shape and develop our messaging to prospective parents. Understanding the needs of families of families seeking schools can inform our growth and development. We also took a step back from our own immediate environments to learn more about the changes within the region and how corporations and businesses are viewing mobility. We explored the challenges that these changes are bringing to our own schools - managing demographics, competition from boarding schools, few expats with children and reductions to financial packages.

This session was followed by Jenny Chiang who facilitated a panel discussion (Tina Herman - International School Beijing, Katie RigneyZimmerman - Saigon South International School, Nicholas Kent - Jakarta Intercultural School and Valerie Koo - School Choice International). The panel dissected what we mean by ‘School Advancement’ and shared stories and experiences of how we can promote collaboration in school to achieve our goal of school growth.

The benefits of having time to sit together to discuss the similarities and differences in our schools, in our challenges and in our successes cannot be overstated. We could listen to each other and learn from each other. Most importantly, we developed relationships, made new connections and built our community. Huge thanks to all involved, to ISKL for providing a wonderful venue and especially to EARCOS for supporting our workshop.