Teach17

Amy McRae Johnson has built her career around international education, school growth, admissions and marketing. She has also helped to build a new international school from the ground up and has seen first-hand what makes schools grow and thrive. In this Teach17 interview, Amy shares practical lessons on reputation, recruitment, retention and what really matters to parents.

Question 1

What first attracted you to working in education?

This is actually a slightly funny story because I got into education completely by accident. I was living and working in London at the time and, although I probably wouldn’t have admitted it then, I was pretty unhappy. I was back in Spain visiting home when I saw a job advertised in education and applied. From the first interview something just felt right, and it also gave me the opportunity to move back to Spain.

What I didn’t expect was how quickly I would become hooked. Schools are incredibly complex, human organisations and there is something very rewarding about working somewhere where the end result genuinely matters.

Question 2

How did your career develop into helping international schools grow?

Quite organically. I started working at group level with international schools in Spain and the UK across marketing and admissions, which gave me a broad view of how different schools compete and grow.

But probably the biggest learning came from working directly with one school on the Costa Blanca and being part of the growth from around 270 pupils to more than 650 over four years. We repositioned the school, changed how it communicated, strengthened admissions, opened new campuses and worked through all the operational challenges that come with rapid growth.

That was when I realised school growth is much bigger than marketing. That thinking eventually became School Growth Partnership.

Question 3

What inspired you to co-found Global Minds International School?

After spending years working with international schools, there was also something incredibly exciting about asking ‘what would we build if we could start with a blank sheet of paper?’

We had seen lots of things that worked brilliantly in international education, but also plenty of inherited practices that schools continue simply because that is how they have always done things.

I think there is still a huge amount of space in education to rethink the way we do things. There are some really interesting concepts and new models starting to appear, but education as a whole is still very much stuck in the past.

There was a very personal reason behind it as well as a professional one, though. We live in the area, have children ourselves, and didn’t feel there was a school option locally that offered what we were looking for for our own children.

Global Minds gave us the opportunity to question some of those assumptions and think about education, the parent experience, the environment and the business model together from the beginning.

Question 4

What did you learn from building a new international school?

Probably that building a school forces you to think about things you can easily take for granted when you are working inside an established one.

In an existing school, there is already a culture, a reputation, a community, systems, teachers, families and years of history. When you start from zero, none of that exists. Every decision contributes to what the school will eventually become, from the educational model and the people you recruit to the way you communicate with the very first families.

It also taught me how interconnected everything is. You can have a brilliant educational concept, but you still need the right building, licences, funding, people, systems and enough families willing to believe in it. A weakness in any one of those areas can hold everything else back.

Question 5

What makes an international school stand out in a competitive market?

Usually not having more things.

Most schools have good teachers, activities, facilities, pastoral care and some version of an international curriculum. The problem is that when everyone communicates the same ingredients, parents struggle to understand why one school is truly different from another.

The schools that stand out tend to understand very clearly who they are, who they are right for and what families experience there that they genuinely cannot get somewhere else. Then that difference is visible throughout the school, rather than only appearing in the marketing.

Question 6

Why do some excellent schools still struggle to attract enough pupils?

Because being an excellent school and being good at communicating why you are an excellent school are two very different things.

We regularly come across schools where the education is very good but very few people outside the existing community understand that. Sometimes their website looks exactly like every other school. Sometimes enquiries are handled badly. Sometimes, the people inside the school struggle to recognise what makes it special. They are there every day, so the things that are unusual, valuable or distinctive can feel normal to them.

Often, the struggles come from not being able to properly identify and communicate what is special about the school to prospective families. Parents cannot choose what they do not know about, and they cannot value something that has never been properly communicated to them.

Question 7

What is the most common mistake schools make when trying to increase enrolment?

Assuming they need more leads.

When pupil numbers fall, the instinct is often to spend more money on advertising. But we have worked with schools generating hundreds of enquiries where enrolment was still disappointing because the problem was further down the funnel.

Response times, follow-up, school tours, offers, leadership involvement, reputation and the proposition itself can all have a much bigger impact than another advertising campaign.

Before generating more demand, I would always want to understand what is happening to the demand you already have.

Question 8

How can a school identify what parents genuinely value?

Ask them, but also pay attention to what they actually do.

Parent surveys are useful, but so are admissions conversations, withdrawal interviews, enquiry data, tour feedback, search behaviour and the reasons families give for choosing or rejecting the school.

One of the most interesting things is that what schools think parents value is not always what parents talk about. For example, we often see schools worrying about whether their facilities are good enough. That is understandable because facilities are physical and easy to compare, but in practice, families repeatedly mention the warmth of the community, confidence in a particular teacher or how their child felt during the visit.

Question 9

What does an effective admissions experience look like for a family?

It should feel personal, reassuring and surprisingly easy.

Choosing a school is a very emotional decision. Families are often moving country, worrying about whether their child will settle or leaving another school because something has gone wrong. They should never feel as though they are being pushed through an administrative process.

Good admissions combines efficiency with humanity: quick responses, thoughtful questions, relevant information, a school visit designed around that particular family, clear next steps and consistent follow-up.

The best admissions teams make families feel understood before they ever try to persuade them.

Question 10

How can schools build trust with parents before they have even visited?

By showing evidence rather than simply making claims.

Nearly every school says it is nurturing, academically strong and has excellent teachers. Parents have very little reason to believe those words simply because they appear on a website.

Show them the teachers. Show them the work pupils produce. Explain how learning actually happens. Let current families tell their stories. Be open about the questions parents genuinely worry about.

Question 11

Why is it important for school leaders, admissions teams and marketing teams to share the same message?

Because from the parent’s perspective they are not three departments, they are one school.

If the website promises one experience, admissions describes another and the Head speaks about something different during the tour, confidence begins to disappear very quickly.

And the problem does not necessarily end once the family enrols. If the expectations created through marketing and admissions do not match the reality they experience once they join, that mismatch often shows up further down the line in dissatisfaction and ultimately retention.

Schools must have a shared understanding of what they stand for and what they want families to understand about them. Marketing communicates it, admissions helps families experience it, leadership gives it credibility, and then the school itself has to deliver on that promise.

That consistency matters from the first Google search right through to whether a family chooses to stay several years later.

Question 12

How can schools communicate what makes them different without relying on familiar phrases such as “nurturing” and “excellent”?

Explain what the word actually means in your school.

If you say you are nurturing, tell me what happens when a new seven-year-old arrives halfway through the year and knows nobody. If you say learning is personalised, show me what a teacher actually does differently because of that. If you say you develop confident young people, show me where pupils are given responsibility.

This is also where a bit of creative brilliance helps. Schools do not have to communicate like every other school simply because they are schools.

Question 13

What can schools do to improve pupil retention as well as recruitment?

Start treating retention as part of growth rather than a completely separate issue.

There is very little point working incredibly hard to recruit 50 pupils while 40 quietly leave through another door.

Schools need to understand why families stay, why they leave and where confidence begins to weaken. That means looking at communication, transition points, leadership changes, academic expectations, community, parent relationships and the experience of individual pupils.

And importantly, you need to start that work long before re-enrolment forms are sent out.

Question 14

How should school leaders respond to falling pupil numbers and growing competition?

With curiosity before panic.

Falling numbers are a symptom. The important question is what is causing them.

Has the market changed? Has a new competitor opened? Is your proposition becoming less relevant? Are fewer families enquiring, or are plenty enquiring but fewer converting? Are existing families leaving?

Those are completely different problems and require completely different responses.

The danger is jumping straight into tactics before properly diagnosing what is happening.

Question 15

How can schools pursue growth without compromising their educational values?

By being very clear about what those values are to begin with and using them as part of the decision-making process.

Growth should not mean trying to appeal to everybody. In fact, some of the strongest schools grow because they become clearer about who they are rather than less clear.

The question should not simply be ‘will this help us grow?’ It should also be ‘is this the kind of growth we actually want’?

Question 16

What advice would you give to a school leader who wants to strengthen their school’s reputation and enrolment?

Start by understanding where you genuinely are rather than where you think you are.

Speak to current families, former families, staff and prospective parents. Look carefully at your admissions data and where families are dropping out of the process. Look at your competitors. Ask whether somebody who had never heard of your school could understand within a few minutes what makes it worth considering.

Then work out what deserves to be amplified and what actually needs fixing.

Reputation is not something marketing can manufacture. Marketing can make reality much more visible, but ultimately the experience has to support the story.

Question 17

What are you most excited about achieving next?

I think what excites me most now is taking what we have learnt from growing individual schools and applying it much more widely through School Growth Partnership.

There are some brilliant schools that should be thriving but are not, often because growth has historically been treated as a collection of separate activities: marketing over here, admissions somewhere else, retention somewhere else again.

We are building SGP around a different idea: working alongside schools as an actual growth partner and connecting positioning, marketing, admissions, retention and strategy.

And personally, I am still fascinated by building schools too. There is something quite addictive about looking at what a school could become and then helping turn that into reality.

Find out more about Amy McRae Johnson:
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