The Review
Most schools plan on instinct and last year's numbers.
The Review replaces that with a comprehensive, data-driven picture of the whole school. Every driver of enrolment, revenue, cost and workforce, benchmarked against your own trend, your local market, comparable schools nationally, and the rest of your network.
It is deliberately rapid: weeks, not terms, so the findings still describe the school you have. And it returns improvement opportunities you can act on, prioritised, sized in dollars, and specific enough for your team to take forward without us.
Fixed scope. From $4,900 + GST.
For Independent and Catholic schools, as single schools or systems.
The Review · Specimen
Riverside Grammar School
A benchmark of enrolment, financial and workforce position, and the improvement opportunities worth acting on first.
Benchmarked
Four ways, all named
Data window
FY2021 to FY2025
Anatomy
The Review runs the same structure for every school
Four areas analysed, one prioritised outcome. The priorities are not a fifth thing we look at, they are what the four produce.
Enrolments
How do we attract, convert and retain more of the right students?
Revenues
Where do we sit against comparable schools on fees, funding and revenue mix?
Cost base
Is the surplus that funds your mission healthy, and what is moving it?
Org design & workforce
Are we structured to deliver the strategy, and can we keep the people we need?
The outcome
Your improvement opportunities, prioritised and sized
Every driver across the four areas rated for the size of the opportunity it holds, then ranked on impact, speed to capture and ease of capture, so you know not only what is available, but what to do first.
Where findings go
Each lever routes to the needs it moves
A finding under one lever is not filed away under that lever. It routes to the need it moves, which is often more than one.
| Review lever | Findings here mostly serve |
|---|---|
| 01 Enrolments | Enrolments · Surplus |
| 02 Revenues | Surplus · Enrolments |
| 03 Cost base | Surplus · Operations |
| 04 Org design & workforce | People · Operations |
The prioritised opportunities are a synthesis across all four levers, not a lever themselves, so they carry no routing row.
Benchmarked four ways
One number means nothing on its own
Every measure in the Review is read against four references at once, each named on the cover and listed in full in the appendix. A figure that looks fine nationally can still be losing ground in your own market.
Your own trend
Five years of your own data, so the direction of travel is visible before anything is compared outward. Position and direction are different findings.
FY2021 to FY2025
Your local competitors
The schools families actually choose between when they choose you, for a picture of your real market rather than a notional one.
6 schools within 15 km
Comparable schools nationally
Matched on enrolment, ICSEA, location, level and sector. Not a sector average, a set you would recognise by name.
24 matched schools
Your own network, if relevant
The other schools in your network, so you can see where you sit among the schools you share funding, policy and practice with, and which of them has already solved what you are facing.
15 schools in your network
Look inside
What a finished Review looks like
Sections lifted from a real specimen: who the school is compared with, where the improvement opportunities sit, and what each one is worth.
The cover
Who you are being compared with, over what window, stated on page one. No unnamed "industry average" appears anywhere in the Review.
Local competitor set
6 schools
The non-government schools within 15 km that your enrolling families also considered
National peer set
24 schools
Matched on enrolment, ICSEA, location, level and sector
Network set
15 schools
All schools in your network
Your own trend
5 years
FY2021 to FY2025
Enrolment
742 students
K to 12, single campus
Drivers rated
17
Across the four levers
Where the opportunity sits
Riverside Grammar School, 17 drivers rated for the size of the improvement opportunity. Estimated annual impact if the gap to the relevant benchmark is closed by half.
Lever 01
Enrolments
Lever 02
Revenues
Lever 03
Cost base
Lever 04
Org design & workforce
Total identified across 17 drivers: approximately $3.0m a year. Three drivers sit at or above benchmark and are shown as such. The map is a statement about where the money is, not a judgement of the school, and the dollar figure in every cell is the same estimate carried through to the prioritisation below, so any number can be traced from the map to the action list.
The comparator view
Enquiry-to-enrolment conversion. Each column is one anonymised comparator school, the school itself in rust, the set median dashed. Switch the set to see the same number change meaning.
6 non-government schools within 15 km · FY2025
In its own market, the school converts at the local median
So what
4th of 7
Local competitor set
At 48%, the school converts at the local median. In its own market it is not an outlier, which is precisely why a local-only comparison would have missed this finding.
The same 48% is unremarkable locally, ten points behind nationally, and mid-table within its own network. One number, three meanings. Closing half the gap to the national peer median is worth roughly 17 additional enrolments a year, about $650k, which is the largest single opportunity in the heat map above. Every opportunity in the Review is sized this way, with the method and the assumptions shown, so you can challenge them.
Conversion rates here are indicative pending real client data. The national peer median of 58% is the median of this school's own 24-school matched set, not an Australian sector norm.
Direction of travel
Total enrolment, indexed to 2021 = 100. The school and its five main local competitors.
The local market grew while the school contracted
So what
12 points
Divergence from the local market, 5 years
The six-school local market grew 6% since 2021. The school contracted 6%. Two competitors captured most of that growth, both following campus investment in 2022, so this is a share shift rather than a demographic one.
Position and direction are different findings. A school at the local median that is losing a point of share a year has a more urgent problem than one below the median and recovering, and a ranked column chart alone cannot distinguish them.
Network pattern
All 15 schools in your network, enrolment against capacity utilisation, FY2025.
Under-used capacity, not falling enrolment, is what is moving cost per student
So what
78%
Utilisation vs 81% network median
The school sits below the network median on both axes. Five schools in the network of similar size run above 88%, so the gap is not structural. Spreading a fixed cost base across an under-filled timetable is a cost-per-student problem before it is an enrolment problem.
For a network, this is the chart that shows a pattern no single school can see about itself, and it is the natural bridge from a school Review to a Network Review.
The payoff
Start where the return is fastest and least contested
Every opportunity is prioritised on three factors, not two: what it is worth, how quickly it pays back, and how hard it is to capture. Not where the number is largest.
Impact, speed and ease in one view
Ten sized opportunities. Vertical axis speed to capture, horizontal axis ease of capture, bubble area estimated annual impact. Hover any bubble for the detail behind it.
Bubble area is proportional to impact, not diameter, so a large opportunity is not visually exaggerated. The shaded region is the first wave: quick and straightforward, which is where a school with limited capacity should start.
Fast, straightforward, and material. Four actions, $1.12m a year.
- 1Redesign the enquiry-to-tour follow-up sequence $650k
- 2Reset the fee schedule before the next cycle $230k
- 3Restructure the sibling and staff discount policy $140k
- 4Assure census data against loading entitlements $95k
Worth doing, but sequence behind the first wave. Three actions, $910k a year.
- 5Review the structure behind the staff cost ratio $420k
- 6Audit the timetable for low-fill classes $310k
- 7Build a recruitment pipeline for specialist subjects $180k
Hold, and act if conditions change. Two items, $230k a year.
- 8Bring outside-hours care in-house, revisit if the provider exits $120k
- 9Rebalance the teaching and support mix as roles turn over $110k
Real, but not recoverable at an acceptable cost. One item.
- 10Establish an international student programme. Three years to first surplus, and CRICOS registration plus boarding capacity you do not hold $260k
Every opportunity we find, sized, ranked on what it is worth and what it takes, including the ones we would tell you not to chase. Specific enough for your team to take forward without us.
What the Review does not do
The Review benchmarks the four levers that sit underneath almost every need a school brings us. It is not everything we work on. Where a finding points deeper than the diagnostic reaches, that becomes a scoped project with its own fee, not an extension of the Review. The scope is fixed so the fee can be.
How Solution Design worksWhat it rests on
Benchmarks built for this sector
Comparison is only as good as the data behind it. 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, and the basis of the financial and network benchmarking.
Live
National teacher vacancy data from Teacher Passport
Every sector and state, updated continuously, underpinning the workforce section rather than a survey from two years ago.
Investment
From $4,900 + GST
A single school Review, fixed scope and fixed fee. Network Reviews are scoped to the system.
Where an opportunity becomes a project, a meaningful share of that fee is contingent on the impact metrics you agree at the outset.
We back our own recommendations
“If we don't believe a solution will return at least three times its cost, we won't pursue the work.”
See the full example Review
Read a complete Review, start to finish
The full specimen for Riverside Grammar School, a fictional school built on real sector data. Every section, every chart, every sized opportunity, exactly as a school receives it.
It's on its way
Open the interactive Review below. The same links are in your inbox, ready to forward.
Open the example Review