Solution Design

We go deep where you want us to.

Not every priority needs us. The Review is written so your team can act on it directly, and plenty of schools do exactly that.

Some priorities are different: the decision locks for a year, the analysis is genuinely specialist, the question is contested internally, or nobody has the six weeks it would take. Those are the ones worth not doing alone.

Scoped to one priority. From $30,000 + GST.

Optional, and always after the Review.

See three worked examples How the work runs

One priority · One project

One workstream, one number to move, one owner.

Improvement starts on the first priority while the second is still being designed, rather than everything waiting on a single large programme to report.

Scoped to

Five times its cost

Fee at risk

A meaningful share

What it is

One priority at a time

The Review ends with three to five priorities, each sized. Plenty of schools take that list and act on it themselves, which is why it is written that way. Where you would rather not, or would rather not do it alone, each priority becomes its own scoped project.

One workstream, one number to move, one owner. You choose which priorities, and how many. Improvement starts on the first while the second is still being designed, rather than everything waiting on a single large programme to report.

See what's inside a Review

How the work runs

Solution Design process

The question changes between engagements. The method does not. Each step has an output you can see, so you always know what you are paying for and what state the work is in.

Frame

We agree the problem precisely and the decision it has to serve, including the date that decision gets taken. Most work that fails was aimed at the wrong question, or landed after the moment it was for.

You get

A one-page brief, the decision and its date

Establish

We prove the size and the cause from your data and our benchmarks before designing anything. Sometimes the number moves once we look properly. Occasionally the problem is not live at all, and we say so rather than build a project around it.

You get

The finding, sized, with its assumptions visible

Generate

We put up several ways to move the number, drawn from what the strongest comparable schools actually do rather than from general practice. Options, not a single recommendation with the alternatives written out of the story.

You get

Three to five options on the table

Test

Each option modelled for financial impact, effort and risk, and stress-tested against how it fails. Every one of these has a failure mode, and it is almost never analytical. We write it down here, not in the final report.

You get

Options modelled, failure modes named

Design

The chosen option becomes a plan: sequenced, with named owners and dated decisions, worked backwards from the date agreed at the start. Fees lock a year ahead and establishment settles in September, so the calendar sets the sequence, not us.

You get

Implementation plan and board-ready paper

Measure

One number, a named owner, a review cadence. Most of these gains fade inside two terms without it, so the reporting is designed in rather than added on. Part of our fee rides on these measures moving.

You get

The measure, the owner, the cadence

Our work

What it looks like

Enrolments

Sixteen students a year from enquiries the school already had

Situation

260 families left contact details. 160 toured. 95 enrolled. Around 65 came onto the site and were never contacted again. The main open day ran in August, months after most families in the catchment had decided.

Insights

Mystery shopping by phone, email and web found enquiries answered inconsistently and, in two of six attempts, not at all
Two years of records rebuilt into a funnel located the leak at enquiry to tour, not tour to offer
Conversion by source showed referrals converting at three times the rate of paid channels, which took most of the budget
Event timing plotted against catchment decision months put the flagship event after the decision

Changes

A written service standard: response time, one named owner per enquiry, a tour offered at first contact, three follow-ups
The main event moved into the decision window, with smaller events targeted at year levels with real capacity
The tour rebuilt around student leaders, segmented content and a dated next step
Materials built, then live call practice with office and leadership staff

Value

~$304k

modelled annual surplus

16 additional students a year, and roughly $1.7m across the years those students stay. No new headcount and no additional media spend, because it converts demand the school already has.

Said before we started

The gain fades within two terms unless conversion is reported monthly by stage and by source. Some schools do not have the capacity to run this at all, in which case the honest answer is to buy it as a service rather than be trained in it.

Operations

Four teaching positions recovered without changing a single class size

Situation

Seventy-two teaching FTE against a timetabled load requiring 66. The relief budget had grown 40% in three years and was read as a shortage. Every year the establishment was set from last year's establishment.

Insights

Teachers per class benchmarked against comparable schools placed the school in the top decile for staffing intensity, at 1.68 against a healthy 1.5
Load analysis by faculty found the gap concentrated in three departments, not spread across the school
Relief spend traced to uncovered periods that the existing establishment could have absorbed
Vacancy data showed the roles being advertised were not the roles the timetable was short of

Changes

Establishment rebuilt from timetabled load rather than from last year's number
Reduction phased entirely through natural turnover across three years, with no redundancy and no change to any class size
Relief converted from ad hoc cover to planned internal cover within existing loads
The purpose stated to staff on day one, before any data was collected

Value

~$520k

modelled annual surplus

Four teaching FTE, recovered over three years. Class sizes unchanged, and the recovered capacity available to fund the specialist roles the timetable is actually short of.

Said before we started

Utilisation data reads as a prelude to redundancies unless the purpose is stated plainly on day one. If the school is not prepared to say it out loud at the start, this work should not begin.

Surplus

A fee rise that widened the scholarship pool

Situation

Fees at $9,200 while Independent schools taking the same families charged $11,500. Set each year at last year plus CPI, with levies added separately, and no view of what the catchment could actually afford.

Insights

Fees benchmarked against the schools families genuinely choose between, not the whole sector, showed a gap of roughly $2,300
Catchment capacity to pay, modelled from ICSEA and household income, showed headroom at the top two quartiles and none at the bottom
Discounts and remissions, totalled properly for the first time, ran well above the intended concession budget
Levies added an unpredictable amount families could not plan for

Changes

A staged increase over three years toward the middle of the comparable set, not the top
Levies folded into a single published fee, so families see one number
A funded, means-tested bursary pool sized so no current family is pushed out
The board paper and the community message written together, before the decision, not after

Value

~$540k

modelled annual surplus

Roughly $600 per student at maturity, net of the expanded bursary pool. The slowest of the three: a decision taken in March lands the following January.

Said before we started

A fee rise without a funded bursary pool moves the enrolment mix as well as the revenue, and the mix change can cost more than the increase earns.

Worked examples, drawn from the patterns we see and modelled on sector data rather than reported from a named school. Every dollar figure is a model with its assumptions shown, not an audited result.

What it rests on

Benchmarks built for this sector

Every recommendation traces back to data: ours, yours, or published. Ours is purpose-built for Australian non-government schools rather than borrowed from another industry.

2,500+

Non-government schools in the funding-and-surplus model

Calibrated against actual My School financial data. It is the basis of every financial benchmark we set.

Live

National teacher vacancy data

From Teacher Passport, across every sector and state, updated continuously. It underpins the workforce work rather than a survey from two years ago.

Three

Reference points on every measure

Your own trend, national peers matched on enrolment, ICSEA, location, level and sector, and the schools families actually choose between when they choose you.

How we back it

A meaningful share of the fee depends on it working

Part of the fee is contingent on the impact measures agreed with you at the outset. It is not enough for the work to have been delivered. Those measures need to be on a clearly positive trajectory well before the full benefit lands.

We scope every project to target five times its cost. Three times is the floor.

Investment

From $30,000 + GST

One priority, scoped as its own project, quoted by negotiation. You choose which priorities, and how many.

On a $30,000 project, we are scoping for more than $150,000 of cost saving, revenue growth or operational improvement, with a meaningful share of the fee riding on the measures we agree.

“If we don't believe a solution will return at least three times its cost, we'll tell you before you commit to the work.”

Start with the priority, or start with the list.

If you already know which decision is in front of you, we can scope it. If you do not, the Review names it first.

Talk with us See what's inside a Review