Two thousand prospective parents funnel down a corridor and into a classroom to watch a lesson in the middle of a school day. The teacher smiles at them, then gets back to the job in hand.

The throng moves on, visiting a music lesson next, then a theatre space, before arriving at the headteacher’s office for a casual chat and the chance to ask a few questions. Of course, they’re not there in real life - but on a virtual tour.

And it all works much better than anyone had previously thought it could.

For so long, a digital tour like this would have been unthinkable: the quality of the experience, the influence of the interactions, the conveyance of subtle social signals, the creation of human connections - these were things that most believed only face-to-face tours could ensure.

But things have changed because of the pandemic, of course - which, as Rob Ford, director of Heritage International School in Moldova, says, “changed everything, and much of it for the better”.

Digital tours for admissions were the only choice for international schools leaders for much of the past two years, but now the benefits many believe they bring have meant they have become the first choice among multiple options.

And, in time, it may be something schools in domestic markets - schools just around the corner from many parents - adopt, too. After all, it saves time, it opens up new possibilities to showcase the school, and it broadens the pool of prospective parents.

Adapting to the new world 

But is it really as positive a move as it looks?

Virtual tours were not something many schools were used to doing before 2020 and the pandemic hit. There were pockets of innovation but, for most schools, printed brochures and in-person tours were the norm.

However, over the past two years, virtual tours have rapidly taken hold out of necessity.

“International schools used online open days extensively during campus closures,” underlines Sam Fraser, director of research at ISC Research.

Rather than simply tolerating the shift, schools found themselves embracing it. Fraser says this way of working opened lots of eyes to new approaches for this core area of their business.

“They saw the benefits, especially for parents based in other countries or [those] who found it more challenging to attend a face-to-face event,” explains Fraser.

Colin Bell, CEO of the Council of British International Schools (Cobis), recognised this trend, too.

“It’s opened up a whole new potential market,” he says. “It’s so easy to go to an online open day in one country while you’re still completing your contract in another. It reduces the worries and concerns of parents who might be moving transnationally.”

Leaders have found that a shift to virtual tours can also give schools the opportunity to engage many more people, says Bell.

“So many people can attend these open days,” he explains. “Not just Mum and Dad and the child, but their siblings, too - or even the grandparents as well, who in some situations might be the ones paying the fees.”

Such has been the positive impact, a shift back to “normal” and away from digital tours is unlikely, says Fraser. Indeed, he thinks the opposite will happen: “[I can see them] expanding into the future”.

Keeping it natural 

It’s important to make clear at this point, though, that “virtual tour” is an incredibly broad term. The range of approaches and technology used is large, and the quality of the end product - and thus the success of the switch - can be hugely affected by the choices made.

For example, Ford moved to virtual tours very quickly at the start of the pandemic, but immediately faced a barrage of questions: not least whether to do 360-degree photos (think Google Street View of a school) or an immersive video that allows the viewer to “move around” and see the whole space.

Ford was tempted by the second option: “We knew a lot of schools - even prestigious, innovative, famous establishments - hadn’t really done something like this, other than a static 360-picture approach for their website,” he says.

“Yet I had witnessed it [360-degree videos] used pre-pandemic at top Ivy League universities in their recruitment of potential international students who often can’t get to physical open days.”

He stuck with his instinct to try a more high-end approach.

To produce the video, the school used a marketing company that had the requisite kit and know-how to produce the film, which Ford says was around €1,000 all in and took about a day to produce.

Of course, it’s not just how it looks but what it shows that is important. And here, Ford says, you have some important choices to make, too.

“I wanted that more chatty, natural style as if I were walking around a group of parents who had never seen the school before,” he explains.

But he admits that this relaxed approach wasn’t an easy choice - a set script has the benefit of no major points being forgotten and potentially being a more structured tour, for example. But he still felt it was right to go with a more informal style.

“It did feel strange and I battled with the marketing group, arguing that a set ‘script’ would be too unnatural and certainly not my style,” he says.

“I know that it has worked because new younger students come through the gates the first time, see me there in the morning greeting everyone, and declare, ‘You’re that man from the video!’”

“A lot of embassies appreciate it for their new staff with families to show them what the school will look like too - the same with potential new staff.”

Of course, all this effort is only worth it if someone actually sees it - and that is why a school’s marketing has to adapt to the new approach to admissions tours. Ford uploaded the video to the school website and YouTube, but he also made considerable use of social media platforms.

The need to be social 

This is key as, according to ISC Research, social media is now vital to admissions work, with half of all admissions staff surveyed by ISC saying that social media is the second or third most common source of applications.

On social media, it is important that you use posts to intrigue and engage parents enough to ensure they go on to watch the full video - as Alison Roberts, head of marketing and admissions at the Swiss International Scientific School in Dubai (SISD), outlines.

“Social media [channels] became the ‘go-to’ places for parents, and we put recordings of all our parents’ events and open morning on our YouTube channel, as well as setting up dedicated admissions links on all our social media,” she says.

She adds, though, that email was just as important. As video content had to be embedded in emails, it was crucial that all attachments were appropriate sizes to ensure bouncebacks did not occur and that videos played easily on whatever device the email was read on.

Thinking through each stage of the above is really important if the overall approach is to be a success. Also key is personalising the approach within that structure. For example, while Ford opted to conduct the tours himself, Roberts wanted a number of staff members to be comfortable hosting. As a result, she arranged for all the admissions, marketing and senior leadership teams to become highly proficient in this way of working.

“IT teams organised dedicated training times and trial runs for all the leadership on MS Teams and Zoom; dedicated Zoom accounts were set up for each department; and training was given on managing meetings, webinars and recording conferences for future viewing,” she says.

“Although this sort of software was used in the school before, the training amplified and accelerated the use of it.”

Roberts also wanted to break the interactive elements of the process up into smaller groups.

The school published dates for several online open mornings and gave prospective parents opportunities to be able to “meet” with key staff online in one-to-one situations - something Roberts said helped to give the experience a more personal touch.

“It became the norm to have several key members of the relevant team on the same call with parents - it meant we could all come together to answer parent queries,” she explains.

Starting from the ground up

For both schools, their existing reputation meant a steady flow of interest in these virtual approaches, but for other schools things were more difficult. For example, North London Collegiate School (NLCS) in Singapore opened during the pandemic in 2020.

“In a start-up school, parents want to see the buildings…They want to see it, tour it, know when it’s going to be ready,” says Gwen Byrom, NLCS’ director of education strategy.

Traditionally for a start-up school, this would have meant doing five or six “meet the principal” events each week, plus coffee mornings, small group sessions to build relationships and tours of the campus to see the facilities. Suddenly all this had to move online - which meant virtual tours became a top priority.

“We had to work harder to build that confidence online, to make it a really compelling proposition for parents. We made links with some of the big corporates, and agents that are corporate placement specialists, and the message tended to be that they were not bringing anyone in,” she says.

“So it took much more time to build that confidence that we were the right place for those who were coming, setting up small-group events for people online where they could ask the principal questions.”

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Byrom has seen both advantages and disadvantages to this.

When people are in the online ether, rather than in the room and able to get answers or commit their signatures, “it tends to fragment things, and you’ve got more opportunity for people to get lost in the process,” she admits.

But, at the same time, being online means people “sometimes feel able to ask questions that they wouldn’t be comfortable to ask in a big group”.

Going live

This focus on live events is one favoured by Mark Steed, principal of Kellett International School in Hong Kong, too.

Though long established and in a more comfortable recruitment position with waiting lists each year, Steed says Kellett cannot rest on its laurels and so embracing new ways to meet prospective parents has been key.

He says that what became clear as they started to embrace this in the pandemic was how much hosting events online - on Facebook and Instagram - worked for very busy, time-poor parents.

“This is one of the busiest cities in the world, so a lot of people on our virtual tours are actually at work, double-working professional couples, earphones in, looking at the tour while they are chucking out a few emails,” he notes. “This sort of approach has really engaged people who just would not normally be able to spare the time with the travel that would entail.”

Furthermore, he says that when he looked at the options for virtual events it was the “live” element of Facebook Live that appealed as it would mean parents were seeing the real life of the school, rather than something they may feel was staged or inorganic.

“You can see the relationships that students have with staff, see the busy corridors as students transition between classes,” he says. “It takes planning, of course, but there’s something authentic and powerful about a live tool like that. If you can pull off that live tour, it gives such a great feel, is such a good marketing pull”.

The kit you use is really important to a professional end product. Kellett ended up with a rather slick operation involving iPads mounted on gimbals (devices that keep shots steady at all times), managed by a cameraman who followed the person giving the tour around.

It sounds snazzy - but does it really boost engagement?

Laura Tyson, director of development and community relations at Kellett, shared some hard data that, she says, proves it does. For a virtual tour of their prep schools in January this year, they had around 2,000 plays of the video in total, and another 300 on YouTube. At peak moments they had around 90 viewers watching at once.

When you consider the fact that an in-person event would usually have a maximum of around 100 people attending, it shows how far a virtual event can reach.

Given all this, some school leaders may be thinking they can do away with in-person events altogether and move everything online - after all, it only requires a bit of kit and access to some popular social media platforms, and you’re away.

Replacing the irreplaceable 

However, for other leaders - such as Julia Knight, primary principal of EtonHouse school in Bahrain - no matter how good a virtual event may be, it can never replace getting prospective parents and their children into a school and helping show off its “feel”.

“To see the set-up of a school physically, rather than a video - this is what parents of younger children are more concerned about,” she says.

Knight has taught in secondary schools too and understands that there is a more natural focus there on exam results and league tables, which may mean the feel of a setting is perhaps not quite as important as the academic attainment that it offers.

However, in primary and preschool, “parents want to know where their little one is going to eat their lunch, and where they’re going to be playing outside”, and doing things in person is the best way of demonstrating this.

That said, EtonHouse still has a strong presence on social media, and Knight sees that Instagrammable moments from the day-to-day life of a school can enhance its reputation and spread the word about the school virally.

“Instagram has become a key part of our marketing strategy because we can tailor it to what we do best, which is in the classroom, showing the school.”

Byrom knows that heads in NCLS schools globally are keen to get back to face-to-face meetings with parents, too.

“They don’t want people to have to get their messaging through lots of pre-prepared video. They’d rather have that human contact and that ability to interact.”

Bell at Cobis - despite also acknowledging the importance of having a good virtual tour presence now - agrees with these leaders that meeting prospective parents in person will always have a place in recruitment strategies.

“There is nothing that competes with a face-to-face experience. I’ve been into schools all over the world, and you cannot manufacture an atmosphere; you cannot match the sights, sound and smell of a school.”

Hybrid futures 

So, are we heading to a hybrid future in the international sector? It looks likely.

“Many of the international schools we have spoken to as part of our field research are now incorporating this into their wider admissions strategies, with most offering options of both online and face-to-face to engage as many potential parents and students as possible,” says Fraser.

Indeed, this is beginning to cross into the domestic market, too. Digital parents’ evenings are proving popular in the state schools of the UK, and some schools have been trying virtual admissions tours during the pandemic even when parent communities are just around the corner. There, too, digital communications is likely to become much more of a norm than before the pandemic.

It’s all about going the extra mile for your parent community, because when it comes down to it, you are asking them to make a huge commitment by trusting you with their child. How can you prove your commitment?

“Like anything in life,” Bell concludes, “those schools that look for more of an innovative approach, they’ll do better.”

Kester Brewin teaches maths in south-east London. He is also a journalist and the author of a number of non-fiction books. His debut novel, set in a school, will be published this summer. He tweets @kesterbrewin