School Reputation: A Guide to Showing Parents What Your School Does

Every school has a reputation. It forms whether the school works on it or not, from what parents see at the gate, what other families say, and what the school itself publishes. Most schools leave the third to a brochure and a website full of adjectives. This guide is about doing better than that, with less effort than a brochure takes.

It follows one argument. Parents choose on what they can see and check. A school's best marketing is its own pupils' work, shown as it is. Publish group results, never an individual child's. Celebrate pupils in ways they and their parents have agreed to. Keep the page current, because a stale page says more than an empty one. And never claim what you cannot show. Each section links to articles that go deeper.

What a school's reputation rests on

A school's reputation rests on three things: what parents see when they visit, what other families say, and what the school publishes. Only the third is fully in the school's hands, and it shapes the other two. Published evidence matters because a parent cannot check an atmosphere or a rumour, but they can check a number with a date and a count. Hastings and Weinstein (2008) showed that when parents receive clear information about results, more of them act on it. A school that publishes nothing checkable leaves its reputation to photographs and hearsay.

What parents look for is well studied, though mostly in state systems. The OECD (2015) surveyed parents of 15-year-olds in 11 countries and economies. A safe environment was the most important criterion in every system but one, followed by a pleasant climate and the school's reputation, then academic achievement, then distance. Burgess, Greaves, Vignoles and Wilson (2015) looked at what parents in England actually chose for their children starting primary school. Three things drove choices: academic attainment, the social mix of the school and distance from home.

Two things follow for a private school. Parents want to know their child will be safe and happy, and they will ask other families about it. And parents value results, but they can only value results they can see. MacKenzie, Hayden and Thompson (2003), in a study of three international schools in Switzerland, found that the perceived importance of an English-medium education was a major factor. A school that teaches English has one more thing parents want to check: whether the English is real.

The three sections that follow cover what to publish before a family enrols, how to celebrate pupils without exposing them, and what to say about your English program in a form worth linking to. The closing section puts it into a school year.

Proof before they enrol

A prospective parent is deciding on thin evidence. The research on how they decide is summarised in How Do Parents Choose a School?. Its short version: parents say safety and atmosphere; their choices show results, distance and other families; and clear information moves them.

The gap is on the school's side. Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown (2004) reviewed 25 studies of school marketing, under the headings of perceptions, planning, strategies and promotion, and found the research itself limited. Lubienski (2007) examined promotional materials from schools in a competitive and diverse US urban area. He found that emotional themes and images dominated. The materials, he argued, worked against reasoned choice based on how effective a school is. Both are studies of state schools. We know of no equivalent study of private language schools, but anyone who has read a private school brochure will recognise the pattern.

Abdulkadiroğlu, Pathak, Schellenberg and Walters (2020) add a harder finding, from New York City's high school admissions. Parents preferred schools with high-achieving peers. Once peer quality was accounted for, their preferences were unrelated to how much a school actually added to its pupils' outcomes. Parents cannot value what they cannot see, and effectiveness is nearly invisible from outside. A school that shows what its pupils did, with a comparison, is showing something no brochure shows.

How to Show Your School's English Results to Prospective Parents sets out the method. Show three things: how much pupils read, the levels a cohort reached, and what they read. Give every number its period, its comparison and its count of pupils. Then say what the number does not show.

The three questions to put beside every number

• Over what period? A term and a year, written out in full.
• Compared with what? The same pupils earlier, or last year's cohort. Say which.
• For how many pupils? The number counted, and the number left out.

A number with all three beside it can be checked. A number without them is an adjective in disguise. The same discipline applies to the term report a school writes for its board, which is where the parent-facing numbers should come from.

Pride with a URL: celebrating pupils safely

Schools are right to be proud of their pupils, and pupils like to be seen. The question is how to celebrate them in public without publishing things about children that they, or their parents, did not agree to.

The rule is short: publish group results, never an individual child's. A class that read forty stories in a term is a fact about a class. A named child's level, score or rank is personal data about a child, and it stays on a public page long after the child has left. The Council of Europe (2021) publishes guidelines on children's data protection in an education setting, written for legislators, schools and industry. They cover the lawful basis for processing children's data, risk assessment and security. Read them, and the law that applies where you are, before publishing anything that identifies a pupil.

How to Publish Student Achievements Safely works through the practical side. It covers what a school can celebrate, what agreement to seek from pupils and parents, and how to word a public page so that it celebrates without exposing. The principle is agreement first. A child who is proud of a certificate should be asked, with their parents, whether they want it on a public page. Some will say yes. Some will not, and their reasons are theirs.

Agreement is not a form signed once at enrolment. A general photo consent from three years ago does not cover a named reading result published today. Ask for each kind of use, record the answer, and make it easy to withdraw. A school that does this can say so on its page, and parents notice.

What can be celebrated in public

• Group achievements. Stories finished by a class, levels reached by a cohort, a school's standing in a competition.
• The work itself, with agreement. A story a pupil wrote, or a recording of a pupil reading, with the pupil's and parents' consent recorded and revocable.
• Events. A reading week, a visiting author, a house competition, described without individual results.
• Recognition of staff. The teachers who ran a program, with their agreement.

Competition between schools is one of the strongest sources of pride. Why Inter-School Competition Gets Students Reading Daily covers what it does for motivation. On a public page, show the school's standing, not any pupil's.

Data protection is also a question for the tools a school uses. Student Data Privacy: Questions to Ask an EdTech Vendor lists what to ask any platform that holds pupil records. Two questions matter most here: who can see a named pupil, and whether the platform ever shows one in public.

A badge worth linking: what to publish about your English program

A parent who has decided to look closely wants to know what the English program is. Not 'excellent', but what pupils read, how often, at what level, and what happens when a pupil falls behind. What to Publish About Your English Program sets out the page: the program in plain words, the reading list by level, the results panel, and the date.

Two habits make the page worth linking to from anywhere, including from parents' own messages to each other.

Keep it current

A page that is out of date tells a parent something. Either the school stopped counting, or the count got worse. Both readings do more harm than an empty page would. Put a date on every number and refresh the page at the end of each term. The same record that produces the term report for the board produces the parent-facing numbers. How to Write a Term Reading Report for Your Board describes that report. The two should never contradict each other.

Never claim what you cannot show

Campbell (1979) observed that the more a quantitative indicator is used for decision-making, the more subject it becomes to corruption pressures. It then tends to distort the processes it is meant to monitor. He gave achievement tests as an example. When test scores become the goal of teaching, he wrote, they lose their value as indicators of educational status. A school that publishes one headline number and then manages to it will end up publishing a number that means less each year. Publish a few numbers that check each other, keep the definitions the same, and never rank staff on them.

Plain, specific communication also has evidence behind it, though from a different setting. Kraft and Rogers (2015) ran a field experiment in a US credit recovery program for high school students. Teachers sent parents one individualised sentence a week. The share of pupils who failed to earn course credit fell from 15.8 per cent to 9.3 per cent, mostly by preventing dropout. Messages about what a pupil could improve had the largest effect. That is a study of messages to the parents of enrolled pupils, not of public pages. Our reading is that the same plain, specific style is what a public page should aim for.

What a linkable page contains

1. The program in five sentences: who reads what, how often, at which levels, and what happens when a pupil struggles.
2. The reading list for one class this term, with levels.
3. The results panel: reading volume, cohort levels and external exams, each with period, comparison and count.
4. What the numbers do not show, in one line.
5. The date, and the date of the next update.

A badge on the school's own website that links to a live page of this kind is worth more than any award logo, because a parent can click it and check.

Putting it together in a school year

None of this needs a marketing department. It needs one person who owns the page, a record that already exists, and a calendar. The table is an example, not a prescription.

A checklist before anything goes live

• Does every number have a period, a comparison and a count?
• Is any child identifiable, by name, photo, or a combination of class and description?
• Has every pupil shown in work or images agreed, with their parents, and is the agreement recorded?
• Is there a line on what the numbers do not show?
• Is the date on the page, and is the next update in the calendar?
• Would the school publish the same panel if the numbers were worse?

The last question is the test of honest marketing. If the answer is no, the page is an advertisement, and parents will read it as one. A school that would publish the same panel in a bad year has something rarer than good numbers. It has a page that parents can trust in a good year.

One person should own the page, and it should be someone who sees the record every week. In most schools that is the English coordinator, not the marketing lead. The coordinator knows which numbers are solid and which cohort was checked late. Marketing can shape the page; it should not choose the numbers.

How iRead supports this

In iRead, each school can have a public page: a message, logo and colours of its own, the packs it runs, featured stories with their values, and achievements. It shows aggregate numbers only, never individual students. Appearing in the schools directory and the inter-school competition is opt-in. A school can add a 'Reading School' badge to its own website, linked to its live public page. Individual student data is visible only to the school's own staff.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

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2. Hastings, J. S., & Weinstein, J. M. (2008). Information, school choice, and academic achievement: Evidence from two experiments. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(4), 1373-1414. doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2008.123.4.1373
3. OECD (2015). What do parents look for in their child's school?. PISA in Focus, No. 51. OECD Publishing, Paris. doi.org/10.1787/5js1qfw4n6wj-en
4. MacKenzie, P., Hayden, M., & Thompson, J. (2003). Parental priorities in the selection of international schools. Oxford Review of Education, 29(3), 299-314. doi.org/10.1080/03054980307444
5. Abdulkadiroğlu, A., Pathak, P. A., Schellenberg, J., & Walters, C. R. (2020). Do parents value school effectiveness?. American Economic Review, 110(5), 1502-1539. doi.org/10.1257/aer.20172040
6. Oplatka, I., & Hemsley-Brown, J. (2004). The research on school marketing: Current issues and future directions. Journal of Educational Administration, 42(3), 375-400. doi.org/10.1108/09578230410534685
7. Lubienski, C. (2007). Marketing schools: Consumer goods and competitive incentives for consumer information. Education and Urban Society, 40(1), 118-141. doi.org/10.1177/0013124507303994
8. Council of Europe (2021). Children's data protection in an education setting: Guidelines. Council of Europe, Strasbourg. edoc.coe.int/en/children-and-the-internet/9620-childrens-data-protection-in-an-education-setting-guidelines.html
9. Campbell, D. T. (1979). Assessing the impact of planned social change. Evaluation and Program Planning, 2(1), 67-90. doi.org/10.1016/0149-7189(79)90048-X
10. Kraft, M. A., & Rogers, T. (2015). The underutilized potential of teacher-to-parent communication: Evidence from a field experiment. Economics of Education Review, 47, 49-63. doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.04.001