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1. Marketing and Markets
2. Schools Market
3. To whom are schools marketing ?
4. Market segmentation

5.  What are schools marketing ?

6. Misconception about marketing

7. The process of marketing

8. Product

9. Price- People and Promotion
10. Creating strategic intend
11. The Importance of the Client
12. Never Letting the client Down
13. The School Provides a Service
14. Management of high Quality...
15. Developing a Client
16. Creating a pro active Staff
17. Linking Marketing to Strategy
18. The Nature of Marketing
19. The Planning Process
20. Marketing in schools

21. Marketing in further education
22. Personnel, organization...

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Management
 and
 Marketing

 of Schools

                                                                         21 Century Education and School
 

 

14.THE MANAGEMENT OF A HIGH QUALITY SERVICE APPROACH

A management priority in all organizations should be adopting a client-orientation, focusing on the development of a high quality service approach. However, this is particularly difficult to achieve in a educational context for four reasons and these factors should receive significant management attention:

*         When the educational product or service is being delivered to the client, whether it is a lesson for a child in the classroom or a conversation with a parent at a parent's meeting, the interaction is outside the direct control of the school's management.

*         Once the educational service has been delivered there is very little that is tangible. The way in which an interaction is perceived determines how the quality of the school will be recognized. Thus the clients will perceive that they have (or have not) received a quality, service in terms of a good lesson or a successful interview. This transitory interaction is, therefore, highly significant in assessing quality from a client's perspective. The significance of such interactions needs to be reinforced within the school.

*         Although it is important to assess the quality of the whole educational   experience, it is difficult for school leaders to monitor attitudes; attention has focused in the past on monitoring and evaluating educational processes. The ways in which staff are perceived and the pupils' views of the school have not traditionally received the same level of attention as these educational processes. Schools should always take seriously the clients' perceptions of the product and service.

*         There are many personnel with whom clients may come into contact. Wherever possible, clients should deal with as few people as possible. They should be able to identify and relate to key individuals and not be passed around the organization from person to person. They can then form strong positive relationships with the key person who represents the school to them.

So how do we manage this high quality service approach? The key to success in this is defining standards and ways of dealing with clients that are developed and agreed by staff so that they feel they have 'ownership' of the concepts. Time will be needed for this policy development process. Time is also needed in order to undertake the necessary staff development so that all are aware of how to adopt a high quality service approach. There must also be a management framework to monitor the quality of the delivery of the product and service. Many schools have experimented with 'pupil tracking' as a monitoring device. This involves following one pupil through a week to analyze the quality of the educational experience received. This approach can be extended to observe other types of interaction, for example with parents. There should also be a regular reappraisal of how communications work-for example how enquires are   dealt with –in order to ensure that the system does not defeat its intent.

 

 
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