Marketing, management and schools : a study of a developing marketing culture in secondary schools

Abstract

This is a study of the 'supply side' of the secondary schools market place which has operated in England and Wales since the1988 Education Reform Act. It examines three key issues - the understanding that teachers and education managers have of the concept of marketing; the organisational and operational responses of schools to the demands of marketing; and the ways in which the culture of schools is changing in response to the pressures of marketisation. The study uses a multi-site case study methodology together with a modified Delphi survey. This suggests, firstly, that there is a spectrum of understanding of marketing, from an undifferentiated to a differentiated perspective, with schools and individuals experiencing spectral drift across this range. This enables a model of 'marketing' in schools to be developed, which incorporates the key ideas of communications, recruitment, quality and responsiveness. Secondly, schools demonstrate a reactive, non-rational approach to planning for marketing, with no overt development of marketing strategies, limited use of marketing research or evaluation techniques, and little integration of marketing into existing school development planning. Consideration of school and 'consumer' perspectives enables, however, a number of effective promotional strategies to be identified which use traditional school communication approaches. Thirdly, an Index of Marketing Cultural Development can be used to describe the adoption of a marketing culture in schools. Its use shows that most of the study schools have only weak development of a marketing culture, despite a generally positive view of marketing by teachers and education managers. It suggests a linkage between external pressures on schools, from both policy and the market, internal school attitudes to a market model, and the cultural changes in schools. A four-fold typology of school response to marketisation is developed from this analysis. The study concludes by developing an input-process-output model of the marketisation of schools.

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