Every school that has become a top notch big school today started small. But what makes it to reach its height today is not quantity tho quantity is also a quality but it's majorly quality that has taken the school to its height. As a school proprietor or proprietress, what you should offer to the public is quality. That means quality service. In other words, what you offer to the service is what will bring more pupils or students. Advertisement through service can bring or do what advertisement through media cannot. Quality services to the parents and pupils and students is key.
Another thing that runs down a business is polishing your words. Making promises to parents as they come to register their wards but not keeping to your words. You see proprietors and proprietress collecting money for textbooks, uniforms, and other things. They will include so many things in the list but they will get money for these things and don't give the services or provide these things to the children. Imagine a child paying for textbooks and until the term and even the session ends, the child will not be given those books. This alone can make any parent withdraw his or her ward from the school. Parents will pay for lab fees and computer fees but yet there is no lab or even one computer in the school. This is very bad. As a school proprietor or proprietress, this alone can destroy the name of your school and lead to loss of students.
Environment matters in running a school. Sometimes, you dint even need to have a very big place to run your school business. You can have a small place but tidiness is one of the keys. Aesthetics is very important. You can decorate that small place in such a way that when people visit, they have confidence that their children are safe. No matter how much you can teach or how good you are at what you do, if you do it in a dirty place and without provision of facilities and or amenities, you might lose. No parent will be happy at their children being in a place that is inconvenient for at least 7 hours everyday, no good toilet, no provision of water, refuse dump is close to the learning environment, etc. This can lead to loss of students as the parents might fear that their wards might contact diseases.
One of the things proprietors and proprietress take for granted is attention to staff. They believe that as long as they have students, the welfare of staff doesn't matter. If you treat your staff badly like deducting their money unlawfully, owing your staff even when there is money to pay them, changing staff every term or session, all these leads to loss of students as changing staff every term or session will make parents withdraw their students.
It's quite unfortunate that some schools allow parents to owe so much. A child will attend school for more than a month or even till the close of the term without paying any money and it will be too late to get the fees. All these indebtedness affects the school as the school cannot be run without money, and when there is no money, teachers can't be paid which will lead to loss of teachers. A plan should be made which will enable parents to pay whether weekly, monthly or termly and the plan should be stuck to.