What Do Parents Look for When Choosing a Primary School? Insights from School Presence Parent Research
What really influences a parent's decision when choosing a primary school?
Is it academic results? Location? Facilities? The website? School size? The principal? Or simply what other parents say?
Through our work developing marketing and enrolment strategies for schools, School Presence regularly surveys current and prospective families to understand how they researched schools, why they ultimately chose their school and what they value after enrolling.
We reviewed 224 parent and prospective-family survey responses collected through multiple School Presence projects to identify patterns appearing across different school communities.
The findings reinforce something we regularly see in our work with schools: choosing a school isn't driven by one factor.
Parents use a combination of reputation, relationships, practical considerations, online research and personal experience to decide whether a school feels right for their child.
What does the School Presence parent research show?
The research reveals several recurring themes across the school communities surveyed.
Word of mouth remains extremely influential.
A warm and welcoming community is a major school-choice factor.
Parents begin researching schools earlier than schools may realise.
Websites matter, but they are only one part of the decision.
School tours and personal interactions help turn research into confidence.
Relationships, wellbeing and care become particularly important once families join a school.
Some schools have strong parent satisfaction but relatively low awareness in their wider community.
Not every school was asked exactly the same questions, so we have only combined percentages where questions and response options were sufficiently comparable.
The findings should therefore be viewed as insights from the school communities surveyed rather than a representative study of all Australian parents.
Word of mouth is still one of the strongest influences on school research
Digital marketing matters, but our research suggests schools shouldn't underestimate the influence of conversations happening offline.
Across 80 newer-family responses where the same or comparable question about school research sources was asked, 64% said they used recommendations from friends or family when researching primary schools.
How do parents research primary schools?
64% used recommendations from friends or family
36% used school websites
31% used school tours or open days
31% used Google or online search
28% spoke with kindergarten educators or childcare staff
18% used online reviews
11% used school social media
This doesn't mean digital marketing isn't important.
It means digital marketing operates alongside reputation.
A parent may first hear about a school from another family and then visit its website. They may find the school through Google and then ask a friend what they know about it. They may hear about it from their kindergarten educator and then attend a school tour.
School choice is rarely one interaction.
What does this mean for school marketing?
Schools shouldn't think about word of mouth and marketing as separate things.
Your reputation is part of your marketing.
The experience current families have with your school influences the conversations happening at kindergarten gates, sporting clubs, playgrounds and within local parent networks.
Your website, social media, photography, video and enrolment communications then need to reinforce that reputation with clear and credible evidence.
A warm and welcoming community is a major factor in school choice
The strongest recurring theme in our school-choice research is community.
Across 178 parent responses to comparable questions about why families chose their school, 72% selected a warm and welcoming community or community feel.
This wasn't isolated to one school. The pattern appeared across different school communities and parent cohorts.
The open-ended responses help explain what parents actually mean when they talk about community.
They repeatedly described schools using ideas such as:
Warm
Caring
Welcoming
Friendly
Supportive
Personalised
Children being known
Approachable teachers and leaders
Children not being “just a number”
This is important for school marketing because “strong community” is one of the most common claims schools make.
Simply putting the words “strong community” on a website isn't enough.
Parents are looking for the experience behind the words.
How can schools demonstrate community?
Instead of simply stating that your school has a strong community, provide evidence.
Show teacher and student relationships. Show families participating in school life. Explain how new families are welcomed. Capture genuine interactions through photography and video. Use parent voices. Let prospective families meet staff and students during school tours.
The marketing message becomes much stronger when parents can see the promise being lived.
Relationships and wellbeing matter enormously once families enrol
The research also allows us to look beyond why parents initially choose a school and examine what they value once they are actually part of the community.
Across 112 parent responses using the same question about what families value most about their school, the two highest-ranking factors were strong relationships between students and staff and student wellbeing and care.
What do parents value most once their child is at school?
78% selected strong relationships between students and staff
74% selected student wellbeing and care
57% selected open communication with families
54% selected academic growth and support
53% selected a sense of community and inclusion
This is one of the most important findings for school marketers.
Academic learning matters. But families evaluate their school experience more broadly.
They place enormous value on how their child is known, supported and cared for alongside their learning.
The relationship between a child and the adults at school isn't simply an operational strength. It can be one of the school's strongest marketing messages.
Don't just say “every child is known”
Many schools use phrases such as “every child is known” or “we know every child”.
The sentiment is powerful, but the phrase becomes much more credible when the school can demonstrate what it actually means.
What does a teacher noticing that a child needs additional support look like?
How does the school communicate with families?
How are different learning needs supported?
How do staff build relationships beyond their own classroom?
How does being a smaller school, where relevant, change the experience for the child?
These examples turn a marketing statement into proof.
Parents consider both emotional and practical factors
Parents don't choose schools purely on emotion.
Across the school-choice surveys, practical factors also appeared regularly.
These included:
Convenient location
School size
Class size
Outside school hours care
Facilities and learning spaces
Secondary-school pathways
Learning support
Specialist programs
Academic approach
Extracurricular opportunities
This is why schools need to be careful about trying to reduce their entire value proposition to one marketing message.
A parent might love the school's community but still need reliable outside school hours care.
Another might be attracted by individualised attention but also care deeply about academic opportunity.
Another may initially investigate a school because it is close to home and ultimately choose it because of how they feel after meeting the principal and teachers.
Effective enrolment marketing needs to address both the practical and emotional sides of school choice.
Parents start researching schools earlier than you might think
Across the newer-family surveys, parents reported beginning their research at many different stages.
Some started before their child turned three.
Others began during three-year-old kindergarten.
Many began during four-year-old kindergarten.
Others described beginning their research around 12 to 18 months before their child was due to start school.
This means schools shouldn't wait until formal enrolment season to become visible to prospective families.
By then, some parents have already formed impressions of the schools they are considering.
Your enrolment marketing should begin before enrolment season
A family doesn't suddenly become a prospective family when they complete an enquiry form.
They may have been watching your school for months.
They may already have visited your website several times.
They may follow you on social media.
They may have asked other parents about you.
They may drive past your school every day.
They may already have compared you with several other schools.
Marketing needs to support that longer decision-making journey.
Your school website matters, but it doesn't work alone
School websites were used by 36% of newer families in the comparable research-source data.
That makes the website an important part of school research, but the broader findings show why a website should not be viewed in isolation.
Parents move between multiple sources during their decision-making journey.
Word of mouth may lead to the website.
Google may lead to the website.
A school tour may cause a parent to return to the website.
A recommendation from a kindergarten educator may trigger the first search.
Your website needs to confirm and strengthen what families are hearing and experiencing elsewhere.
What should prospective parents find on a school website?
What the school stands for
What makes it different
What learning looks like
How students are supported
What opportunities are available
What the community feels like
How to visit
How to enrol
It should also provide evidence through authentic photography, video, examples and parent or student voices where appropriate.
School tours turn marketing claims into experiences
Around 31% of newer-family respondents in the comparable research-source data said they used school tours or open days when researching schools.
The qualitative feedback also suggests that the people families meet during the enrolment journey can be particularly influential.
Parents mentioned principals, teachers, staff warmth, personalised attention and the overall feeling of the school.
This is why we consider school tours part of the enrolment marketing journey.
A website can tell a parent that your school is welcoming.
A tour allows them to experience whether it actually is.
Your school tour should provide proof
If your website says students are known individually, show families how that happens.
If your school promotes exceptional teachers, create opportunities for prospective families to meet them.
If community is a point of difference, make the tour feel personal rather than transactional.
If learning is a strength, take families into learning spaces while learning is happening.
The strongest school tours connect what the school says with what the parent sees and feels.
Some schools don't have a satisfaction problem. They have an awareness problem.
One of the most interesting themes in the open-ended responses was the gap that can exist between what current families think about a school and what the wider community knows about it.
Across several surveys, parents described highly positive experiences while also suggesting their school needed greater visibility.
Comments referred to local families knowing very little about the school and suggested greater awareness, stronger promotion to kindergartens, more community involvement, open days, signage and increased online promotion.
For school leaders, this is an important distinction.
If existing families are highly satisfied but prospective families don't know what the school offers, the marketing challenge isn't necessarily changing the school.
It's making the school's strengths more visible.
Good school marketing needs evidence, not just claims
The research consistently points towards qualities that are difficult to communicate through generic marketing language.
Warmth.
Care.
Relationships.
Belonging.
Individual attention.
Teacher quality.
Community.
These aren't things a school can prove simply by writing them in a prospectus or putting them on a website.
They need to be demonstrated.
Turn your school's strengths into visible proof
If your strength is teacher quality, introduce your teachers.
If your strength is individual attention, show how learning is differentiated.
If your strength is community, capture community.
If your strength is student wellbeing, explain how care works in practice.
If your strength is a smaller school environment, explain what being smaller allows you to do differently.
If parents repeatedly tell you their child is known, supported and valued, use those experiences to shape your marketing.
The strongest school marketing doesn't invent a story.
It uncovers the story that already exists and makes it visible.
What should schools take from this research?
Our parent research suggests that families don't choose primary schools through a simple checklist or a single marketing channel.
They gather information from people they trust.
They research online.
They compare practical factors.
They visit schools.
They meet principals and teachers.
They observe how the school feels.
And once they join a school, many of the qualities they value most are deeply human: relationships, care, communication and belonging.
There is an important lesson here for school marketing.
Families may discover a school through Google, a website, another parent, a kindergarten educator or a school tour, but every interaction needs to reinforce the same experience.
What families hear about your school should align with what they see online.
What they see online should align with what they experience on a school tour.
And what they experience before enrolment should align with what families experience once they become part of the school.
That's when marketing becomes more than promotion.
It becomes an accurate representation of the school.
About the School Presence parent research
This analysis draws on 224 parent and prospective-family survey responses collected through multiple School Presence school marketing, enrolment strategy and website projects in Victoria.
The surveys were designed for individual school projects rather than as one controlled research study. Question wording and available response options therefore varied between schools.
To avoid overstating the findings, percentages in this article have only been combined where questions and response options were sufficiently comparable. Qualitative findings are based on recurring themes identified across open-ended parent responses.
The findings represent the school communities surveyed and should not be interpreted as statistically representative of all Australian parents.
Understand what your parents are telling you
Every school community is different.
That's why School Presence doesn't believe a school should build its marketing strategy around assumptions about what parents want.
Parent research can uncover why families chose your school, what they value most, what almost stopped them enrolling, how they researched their options and whether the strengths you believe you have are the same strengths families actually experience.
Those insights can then shape your positioning, website, school tours, enrolment communications, photography, video and broader marketing strategy.
Want to understand what's really influencing enrolments at your school?
School Presence works with schools to uncover what families value, understand their position in the local market and turn those insights into practical marketing and enrolment strategies
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