OACS News Service
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Principals’ conference focuses on student recruitment and retention “It was a very apt topic for us, because there are recruitment challenges all over the province,” says Ted Harris, president of the association and principal of Smithville District Christian High School. Dianne DeGroot, director of admissions for the Ontario Christian School Association in California, was the keynote speaker and shared her thoughts and experiences around successful student recruitment and retention. Harris notes that DeGroot highlighted the importance of positioning parents to be ambassadors for the school. “It was a question of making sure that our protocols are fine-tuned and that we put our current parents in a position to talk about our school by having an excellent program, by making sure that they are just as excited as we are, and that they’re in a position to tell others about it,” he says. Several administrators who attended the conference say they were intriguted by DeGroot’s emphasis on the role of staff in attracting and retaining families. Rod Berg, principal of Holland Marsh Christian School in Newmarket refers to a statistic DeGroot shared that indicates the No. 1 reason Christian families return to a school is the teachers. Berg says as a result of the conference he plans to focus a staff workshop on their role in the recruitment and retention process. Jules de Jager, principal of Cambridge Christian School (CCS), says plans are underway to strengthen the engagement of staff at his school in the promotion process as well. “We will be working harder to create the sense on staff that everyone at CCS is on the ‘retention team,’” he says, noting they will be looking to some strategies DeGroot provided for achieving this. George Petrusma, principal of Knox Christian School in Bowmanville also says he is interested in training staff and students to receive visitors in the future. While everyone in the school community has a role to play in the recruitment process, DeGroot also spoke about the value of having a single staff member devoted to admissions and development. Holland Marsh Christian School is seriously considering hiring an employee to take on this challenge, says Berg. Berg adds he came away from the conference with a strong sense of the importance of making recruitment and retention a deliberate component of school activity. While in past years it may have been possible to focus on providing a quality education with the assumption that families will show up, that can’t be the case any longer, he says. “It’s a new day and age, and recruitment and marketing needs to be an effective part of the process,” says Berg. If you have feedback on this article please contact michelle(at)axiomnews.ca, or call the newsroom at 800-294-0051.
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