HOW AI IS CHANGING THE WAY PARENTS CHOOSE A NEW SCHOOL
In the second of two articles looking at the way parents choose a new school for their children, Kushal Kundanmal looks at the question of how schools can engage with new families in a changing digital environment being shaped by AI.
Parents now ask for guidance
In my first article, The New School Tour, I looked at the question of school visibility and how families looking for a new school are increasingly using AI assistants alongside a more traditional search. They are looking for guidance – from their preferred AI assistant.
For a school, it is therefore essential to know if a prospective family’s AI assistant can ‘see’ the school. More importantly, can the school be seen when families ask their assistant the questions that matter to them? A school may be excellent, distinctive, and deeply valued by its current families, yet still be absent from the answers prospective families receive. It is therefore important to be aware of the picture painted across AI platforms, and then to take the kind of action to ensure your online visibility reflects who you are.
The engagement process
But being seen fully online is only the beginning.
Having reviewed your school’s visibility, it is important to engage as effectively as possible with the people who can now see you. Admissions and marketing staff are always impossibly busy, but a well-prepared AI admissions assistant – or concierge – can play an important part in bringing about high-quality engagement with the people most parents really want to talk to – one of your admissions team. As parents interact with a good inquiry system and assistant, the nature of the interchange is recorded and can be monitored by the team who are able to prioritise who to contact next, within an engagement process which is normally conducted in six well-recognised stages.
1. Inquiry: from curiosity to conversation
Once a family contacts the school, the next question is whether their interest will become a ‘real’ conversation. Many prospective families visit a website anonymously. They browse fees, curriculum pages, admissions requirements, boarding options, examination results, transport routes, and university destinations.
Some are ready to register formally. Many are not. They have questions first and this is where the help of a skillfully prepared assistant can become important. This might mean providing not just the capability to answer various questions about admissions requirements, curriculum pathways, and so on, but to provide guidance as the school’s concierge takes over from the family’s assistant. This means receiving help at the exact moment when they need it — not only during office hours, and not only if they already know whom to contact.
A well-prepared concierge can do this, and, increasingly, this is what people expect at this early stage of engagement.
2. Qualification: understanding the context of the inquiry
This early engagement is vital, and in the process a visitor becomes a real parent of children who may come to the school, whose questions reveal what they care about. Their concerns reveal what may stop them progressing and their behaviour tells the school something useful before a human member of the admissions team steps in.
Every admissions team knows that not all inquiries are the same. Some families are highly engaged and ready to apply. Others are exploring. Some sense how their needs are likely to be met. Others may need guidance towards the right pathway, year group, programme, or timing.
A common issue, for example, is how a child’s birthdate determines grade or year group placement. In the UAE a child’s citizenship and religion can also have an effect on the curriculum that they are required to follow by the regulator. Schools need to identify these signals as early as possible as they gauge programme interest, location, age, language needs, urgency, readiness, and fit.
Although the concierge can be a life-saver, the goal is not to replace human judgement. It is to make human follow-up better-informed. When the team speaks to a family, they should already understand what the family has asked, what they care about, and where they may need reassurance.
3. Follow-up: Keeping momentum alive
Then comes follow-up.
This is one of the most fragile parts of the admissions journey. A family may be interested, but life intervenes. A document is missing. A parent needs to speak with a spouse. A child is anxious about moving. A deadline is unclear. A competing school responds faster. Momentum can disappear quietly.
It is important that schools keep that momentum alive. Timely reminders, next-step nudges, multilingual answers, and personalised guidance can prevent an interested family from drifting away. The experience however, must feel less like being processed and more like being accompanied. In this context the continuing support a concierge can give families outside office hours with human follow-up when needed is invaluable.
4. Application: removing friction at every step
The application stage always brings its own friction. Requirements can be confusing. Families may be applying from different systems, countries, or educational backgrounds. They may not know which documents are needed, what the assessment process involves, or what happens after submission.
It is important to guide families through these steps, reducing uncertainty and helping admissions teams focus their time where it is most needed.
Nowhere is a ‘helping hand’ more important – and in a well-designed system, this hand-holding can be automated. And it is also where admissions intelligence becomes really practical. The school should be able to see where families hesitate, which questions repeat, and which steps create unnecessary friction. Over time, that insight helps improve both communication and process as the baton is passed to a team member.
5. Offer
This is the moment when the promise of the school begins to become real. Families need to feel carried across the finish line: forms completed, expectations clear, practical questions answered, and the child welcomed into the community.
The offer is always a human decision – but the preparation of the offer checklist and all the admissions papers for approval can – and should – be automated. This, again, is an important way in which a team’s invaluable time can be saved by an AI admissions concierge.
6. Enrolment and beyond: learning from every signal
Then comes the onboarding.
Beyond enrolment, the same intelligence should continue to help the school learn. What questions have families asked before they join? Which concerns predict hesitation? Where do students need more support? Which communication gaps appear again and again? What patterns can help admissions, marketing, student services, and leadership make better decisions?
The idea of a well-informed AI concierge assisting the admissions team, helps the process move from a series of isolated interactions to a richer understanding of an actual family’s application journey, which in turn will improve a school’s ability to support them from pre-inquiry to joining the community.
Admissions as one connected journey
A good admissions concierge is trained to deal with the complete application journey for a specific school, from the search to enrolment and the first day in class. Discovery, inquiry, qualification, follow-up, application, offer, enrolment, and beyond are not separate silos. They are connected moments in one relationship between the school and a family.
For schools, the opportunity is not simply to “use AI.” The opportunity is to understand families better, respond faster, communicate more clearly, and make the journey from first search and even on to graduation feel more personal, more supportive, and more intelligent.
A good school will already have the substance of what a family is looking for: strong teaching, thoughtful leadership, real care, meaningful outcomes, and a distinctive culture. A good concierge helps ensure that families feel informed when they search, understood when they enquire, supported when they apply, and strengthened by what the school learns along the way.
Kushal Kundanmal is CEO of EduSight, a platform that uses AI to help schools and universities build student recruitment and engagement.
FEATURE IMAGE: by stockphotodirectors on iStock
Support images: by Philip Oroni For Unsplash+, Aakash Dhage For Unsplash+ & Liudmila Chernetska on iStock
