The organisation

Ridgewood High School is a local Secondary School based in Stourbridge, West Midlands and a member of The Stour Vale Academy Trust (SVAT).

The Academy is currently a family of three Secondary and three Primary schools. Whilst each school has its own distinctive identity and culture, they all work in partnership to achieve excellence in every area of school life.

The brief

In Stourbridge, an oversupply of secondary school places had resulted in Ridgewood High School seeing their admission levels running well below its PAN (Published Admission Number).

They wanted to communicate with local pupils and parents of students that the school is fast improving, caring and kind school with a renewed focus on excellence.

Although Ridgewood High School had been under special measures a few years ago, now under the new leadership team at Stour Vale Academy Trust, the school is progressing rapidly and is a great choice for families in Stourbridge.

The solution

To help improve the school profile and the number of people choosing Ridgewood High School as their preferred Secondary School choice, we agreed on an integrated enrolment campaign. The plan included: bus advertising, a targeted brochure drop, a promotional video, photography, and a social media campaign – and it needed to happen quickly with applications closing on 31st October.

We started by developing a clear concise message ‘Ridgewood: Stourbridge Choice’ that would be used throughout the campaign.

This would be displayed on the back of 20 buses for a 4-week period and would be seen by at least 48,000 people in the Stourbridge area and many times more in the borough of Dudley.

Other elements of the campaign included:

• 6pp 210 x 210mm brochure was hand delivered (with GPS tracking) to 3000 addresses in Wollaston and the school received many compliments from local people.
• A suite of photographs for future use across all media including the school website, prospectus, social media etc.
• A professional promotional video to show everyone what they have been missing! https://vimeo.com/456183279

In addition to this, we also launched a social media campaign that would build on Ridgewood High School’s current offering. Using a combination of organic and paid content with a tailored tone of voice, we used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to underline the message that Ridgewood High School should be the first-choice secondary school for 2021 entry.

The results

Two days after the application deadline, we received empirical results from Stour Vale Academy Trust: entry levels had increased by 23% on the previous year.

In a year when secondary school capacity had increased in Stourbridge, it would have been understandable if Ridgewood’s share had decreased, but, instead, the trend was reversed.

Ridgewood Headteacher, Mrs Rae Cope, the SVAT CEO, Stephen Dunster, and his Central Team have overseen a remarkable improvement in the school’s performance. The marketing campaign has helped to spread the message within the Wollaston community that their local school is excellent and should be their first choice.

We are very pleased to have played a part in restoring the local community’s faith in Ridgewood High School and look forward to working with them again.