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Falling Pupil Numbers: How Schools Can Attract Families by Listening to Parents and Pupils

By Danni Fothergill, Head of Marketing at Edurio

Across many areas in England, falling pupil numbers are becoming a growing challenge for schools and trusts. Birth rates are down, competition between schools is up, and parents have more choice than ever.

Which leaves a slightly uncomfortable question for those of us in marketing and comms:

How do we help our schools stand out?

One answer I keep coming back to is actually quite simple.

Understand the experience of your pupils and parents, and show how it’s improving over time.

By this I mean consistent data, year after year, with national benchmarks alongside it. Because that’s when something interesting happens: your story becomes evidence.

Experience is what parents really care about

When parents choose a school, they’re not just looking at Ofsted grades or exam results.

They’re asking things like:

  • Will my child be happy here?
  • Will they feel safe?
  • Will the school communicate well with us?

That’s all experience. Trusts and schools that measure this properly can do something really powerful. They can show trends.

Instead of saying:

“Our pupils enjoy school.”

They can say:

“Pupil happiness has increased over the past two years and is now above the national benchmark.”

The data often shows things we didn’t expect

When you start looking at pupil experience data across the system, some patterns jump out.

For example:

  • Pupil happiness in primary declines steadily from Year 3 to Year 6. 
  • Only 16% of secondary pupils say they often learn about people like themselves in class. 
  • And while 67% of primary pupils find lessons interesting, that drops to 26% in secondary. 

These aren’t just interesting statistics. They show leaders where the experience starts to wobble, which means they can actually fix it. And once you fix it, you can show the improvement the following year. That’s gold dust for both school improvement and communications.

Parents notice the experience too

Parent experience is just as important.

National data shows:

  • Only 57% of parents say it’s easy to attend school events. 
  • Overall satisfaction with school engagement sits at around 61%. 

Those kinds of insights help trusts understand how families actually experience their schools.

And if you improve those things, communication, accessibility, engagement, and parents talk, which brings us to a slightly more practical point.

The ROI can be surprisingly simple

A single pupil usually represents £5,000–£7,000 in funding each year.

So if improving your reputation with parents helps attract just five additional pupils, that could mean £25,000–£35,000 more funding annually.

Suddenly, listening to parents and pupils doesn’t just feel like the right thing to do. It starts to look like a very sensible investment.

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And a quick word on staff

Finally, it’s hard to talk about pupil experience without mentioning staff.

The two are deeply linked. Encouragingly, recent data suggests the risk of staff resignation has actually decreased slightly compared with previous years. But again, you only see that if you measure it.

And when staff feel supported, the benefits show up everywhere, including the experience pupils and parents talk about.

The opportunity for comms leaders

In a world of falling pupil numbers, shouting louder probably isn’t the answer.

But showing evidence that your schools are improving might be.

Trusts that can demonstrate:

  • happy pupils
  • engaged parents
  • motivated staff
  • improving trends over time
  • results compared to national benchmarks

have something really powerful.

A credible story about schools that are getting better every year.

Where Edurio fits in

More and more trusts are using tools like Edurio’s pupil, parent and staff surveys to get this kind of insight.

The key thing isn’t just running surveys.

It’s having consistent measurement and national benchmarks, so leaders can see:

  • how things are changing each year
  • how their schools compare nationally
  • where to focus improvement efforts

For comms teams, it also gives you something really valuable: a credible story. Not just “our schools are great”.

But “our schools are getting better, and here’s the data to show it”.

View what other trusts say about Edurio →