The Admission Season Checklist: What to Set Up Before the Enquiries Start

Work back from the day the first advert goes out

Pick that date first and plan backwards from it. Everything below takes a few days, and some of it, printing in particular, cannot be rushed at the end. Allow six to eight weeks if you are starting from nothing, less if last season's form only needs updating.

If you are not sure when enquiries peak for a school like yours, look at when last season's enquiries actually arrived rather than when the session started. The peak usually comes well before the first day of term, and an advert that starts at the peak has already missed the families who decided early.

Settle the numbers before you advertise them

An advert makes promises, and the office has to be able to keep them. Agree these before anything is printed or published, and write them down where the person answering enquiries can see them.

• Seats per class and section for the new session, after this year's promotions and the families you already know are leaving
• The admission fee, any security deposit, and the monthly fee for each class, in the words you will use on the phone
• Age requirements for the entry classes, stated as a cut-off date of birth rather than an age, so there is nothing to argue about
• Test or interview dates, and which classes they apply to
• Sibling and staff-child discounts, if you offer them, so nobody invents one on a call
• The last date you will accept applications, and what happens to enquiries after it

Write the document list once

Parents ask what to bring more than they ask anything else, and most offices answer slightly differently every time. Decide the list, put it on the form's thank-you screen and in your WhatsApp reply, and give the same answer everywhere. A typical list for a new admission in Pakistan:

• The child's B-Form, or a birth certificate for a child who does not have one yet
• Recent passport-size photographs
• A copy of the father's or guardian's CNIC
• The school leaving certificate, for a child moving from another school
• The last result card, for admission above the entry classes

Build the form, then cut it

Build the enquiry form after the numbers above are settled, because half of its questions come from them. The class list is the seats you are actually offering. The date of birth is there because of the age cut-off.

Then remove every question you would not act on before the family visits. The enquiry exists to get a phone call answered, and each extra field costs you some of the parents who were only half-decided. Our guide to taking admission enquiries online covers what to ask, and the four questions schools most often get wrong.

Make the links, and fix them before anything is printed

Make one named link for each place you will advertise: each paid advert, the WhatsApp broadcast to current parents, the gate banner, the flyers, the school website. It costs nothing, and it is the only way to know at the end of the season which of them produced admissions.

Settle each link's wording before the banner goes to the printer, and do not change it afterwards. A printed QR code cannot be updated. In Edflo, renaming a form's link breaks every copy of the old one already in circulation, printed QR codes included. Whatever tool you use, check what happens to the old link before you rename anything.

• Scan the QR code on the print proof from two metres away, on an ordinary phone, before you approve it
• Open every link on a phone that is not signed in to anything, the way a stranger will
• Keep one extra link for anywhere you cannot name in advance, so untracked enquiries have their own row rather than disappearing

Decide who answers, and how fast

An enquiry is worth most in the first few hours after it is sent, while the parent still remembers filling it in and has not yet heard back from the school down the road. Every enquiry needs a named person responsible for it, and the whole office needs to know who that is.

• One person who owns new enquiries, and a named deputy for their day off
• A target for the first call. The same working day is a reasonable promise to make yourself
• A plan for enquiries that arrive in the evening or over the weekend
• A short script for the first call, so every parent hears the same fees and the same dates
• A saved WhatsApp reply with the document list, the address and the visiting hours
• One place for notes like "ring back after the results", so they are not kept in somebody's head

Test it the way a parent will

Before the first advert goes out, somebody who did not build the form should fill it in from start to finish on an ordinary Android phone, over mobile data rather than the office Wi-Fi. Then check what the office received.

• Does the form open quickly, with the first question visible without scrolling?
• Does the class list match the seats you are actually offering?
• Can a photograph of a B-Form be uploaded over mobile data on the application?
• Did the alert reach the person who owns enquiries, and how long did it take?
• Submit a second enquiry from the same mobile number. What does the office see?
• Does the thank-you screen say what happens next, and by when?

Once the enquiries start

Run the season from one list, every morning, ordered by what is due rather than by what is newest. Look at each campaign's numbers after the first two or three days rather than at the end. If people open the form and leave without starting it, the advert is promising something the form does not deliver, and that is much cheaper to fix in week one than in week six.

When a class fills, take it off the form rather than collecting enquiries you cannot honour, and start a waiting list for it. At the end of the season, write down which campaign produced enrolled students, not just enquiries. It is the one number that should decide next year's budget.

Doing it in one system rather than four

Most of this checklist is decisions, and no software makes them for you. What software can do is stop the decisions leaking once the season is busy.

In Edflo, the admission enquiry form starts from a ready template, and each campaign gets its own named link reporting views, unique visitors, starts, submissions. Every enquiry arrives with an owner and a follow-up date, a parent who enquires twice is flagged rather than turned away, and when the family says yes the enrolment form opens already filled in, so nothing on this list is typed out twice.