Resources

A key task of the pre-opening period is recruiting your first cohort of pupils. Pupil recruitment affects almost every other aspect of your project: they determine your financial viability, your curriculum planning, and staff recruitment. Your group will need to work hard to ensure that you market your school effectively and accurately and NSN has produced some guidance about how you might do this.

During pre-opening, you will also need to develop an admissions policy and finalise your admissions arrangements. The DfE has produced several documents on various aspects of free school admissions and NSN has produced a comprehensive guide.

Ultimately, what works best will depend on your local circumstances and along with advice tailored to your needs, a range of best practice case studies, exemplars and tools are available through the NSN Essentials Advisory Service and Project Management Partnership. 

A key task of the pre-opening period is recruiting your first cohort of pupils. Pupil recruitment affects almost every other aspect of your project: they determine your financial viability, your curriculum planning, and staff recruitment. Your group will need to work hard to ensure that you market your school effectively and accurately and NSN has produced some guidance about how you might do this.

During pre-opening, you will also need to develop an admissions policy and finalise your admissions arrangements. The DfE has produced several documents on various aspects of free school admissions and NSN has produced a comprehensive guide.

Ultimately, what works best will depend on your local circumstances and along with advice tailored to your needs, a range of best practice case studies, exemplars and tools are available through the NSN Essentials Advisory Service and Project Management Partnership.