Head of Admissions

ROLE SUMMARY:

This is a rare and exciting opportunity to join an outstanding and ambitious founding team at King's College School, The Bahamas, Inspired's premium school on the island paradise of The Bahamas, which continues to grow following its opening in August 2022, and which will inaugurate its boarding house in August 2025.

King's College School, The Bahamas, opened in September 2022 in Nassau. It is the only school in the region that is part of a leading global group of premium schools. The King's group offers over 50 years of academic excellence combined with proven best practices from Inspired Schools across six continents.

For this 2024/25 academic year, the school welcomed over 250 students from Pre-Reception to Year 9. An additional year group will be added every year until Year 13.

The school is housed in a newly built 10-acre campus of architectural significance. It offers the highest quality educational facilities, ensuring that students benefit from a learning environment designed for how students learn in the modern day.

Facilities include light and airy classrooms, state-of-the-art science labs, a multipurpose hall, a 25-meter swimming pool, football pitches, tennis courts, padel courts, dance, drama, and art studios, an adventure park playground, and plenty of green spaces and shaded areas for students to enjoy.

As the Head of Admissions, you will be responsible for leading the acquisition and conversion, including the outreach and recruitment events and supporting the retention strategy.

Reporting to the Founding Principal, you will be target-focused and responsible for the delivery and development of a highly effective acquisition and retention function, one that is responsive to the evolving needs of student enrolment within our schools, grounded in the principles of customer service excellence and the values of King’s College School, The Bahamas.

The successful candidate will bring innovative thinking and a collaborative leadership style to advise the Founding Principal and motivate and empower the leadership team, resulting in enhanced enrolment and retention outcomes for the school.

The Head of Admissions is expected to have a whole school approach and ensure that they understand the importance of daily school life and school events in relation to termly activities. He or she will also be expected to attend whole school events to gain a thorough understanding of the academic and pastoral experiences that students can expect when coming to King’s College School, The Bahamas.

Ideally this role will commence in February 2025.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• To implement the admissions commercial strategy (focused on student acquisition and retention from enquiry to enrolment) for the school, working closely with the Founding Principal and Group marketing team.
• Communicate with parents of prospective and exchange students as first point of contact, to ensure they receive accurate and timely information and advice regarding admission to the school.
• Lead the Admissions team and/or guide the Founding Principal and SLT to achieve sales targets, ensuring they have the knowledge, training and support to deliver a customer-centred service to support student growth.
• Deliver best-in-class tours for prospective parents and partnership prospects (businesses, embassies, etc.). These will be conducted throughout the year (within and outside term time as required).
• Ensure service standards and quality assurance procedures are met and evolve with parent expectations and needs.
• Ensure admissions, conversion approach, and associated processes enable the school to optimise the achievement of student recruitment targets, with significant accountability for conversion from enquiry to application and application to enrolment.
• Guide the Senior Leadership Team in implementing best practice processes to increase retention. This includes leading the customer insights programme, managing potential leaver files, and participating in retention-focused student and parent events.
• Working with the Group Marketing Department, support the production of relevant publications such as school calendars, newsletters, prospectus, academic results, university destinations, etc. to ensure information is conveyed clearly and concisely, positively promoting the attributes of the school at all touch points.
• Generate and maintain a close network of partners, prospective parents, students, feeder schools, partner organisations, colleges, local businesses and visitors to the school.
• Undertake data analysis and lead, develop and be fully responsible in maintaining accurate data in school systems, enabling responsive decision-making through the enrolment process and accurate forecasting during annual planning.
• Assist/Guide the Founding Principal in making recommendations to senior managers regarding the gap to target and the subsequent number of applications and offers needed to secure or surpass the target enrolment number. Factor in risks to target, e.g., potential or confirmed leavers (consider previous years’ data).
• Plan, coordinate, and implement a successful programme of events, including recruitment fairs, open mornings, taster days, and exhibition events. To maximise attendance, events might be scheduled periodically after hours and on weekends.

THE IDEAL CANDIDATE WILL HAVE:

• Sales management experience within a professional services setting.
• Track record of exceeding sales targets.
• Strong leadership and influencing skills.
• An understanding of the principles of sales and marketing.
• Outstanding interpersonal skills with an ability to performance manage a team of business developers and build effective and trusting relationships and professional networks in the wider community.
• Highly competent in using a range of IT systems, including MIS & data analytics tools.
• Experience working with CRM systems and integration with the sales life cycle.
• Ability to communicate effectively and build confidence and credibility at senior levels both in person and through papers, presentations and reports. This includes the ability to distil and communicate complex information, to persuade and influence, and to keep the school abreast of progress and performance.
• Strong data analysis and interpretation skills.
• Ability to operate at a strategic level whilst ensuring translation of the strategy into clear, measurable deliverables.
• Demonstrable experience in managing budgets, resources and funding, driving enhancements in systems and processes to deliver improved performance.
• Understanding of and ability to build strong customer advocacy and repeat client loyalty and retention.
• Experience working with the education sector is desirable but not essential.

SAFEGUARDING STATEMENT

Inspired Education Group is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff, volunteers and other third parties to share this commitment. Safer recruitment practices and pre-employment background checks will be undertaken before any appointment is confirmed.