'In All Our Interests': Internal marketing at Northwark Park School

Abstract

In all the current work on education competition and the ensuing growth in marketing and promotion, one critical aspect has become sidelined, i.e. the marketing work that educational providers employ to shore up internal 'leakage' at key points of transition. Across all phases of the maintained UK educational sector, there are various possible and actual points of transition, and therefore potential losses as well as gains to be made from an internally constituted market. Not only do institutions and organisations have to look to their external competitors and external markets, they need also to attend to their internal 'natural' market; their current client-base. Drawing on a study of post-compulsory 'choice making', we explore the internal marketing tactics and strategies undertaken in Northwark Park School.