Students don't leave in Term 4. They leave in Term 3, quietly, and you find out in Term 4 when the re-enrolment form doesn't come back. By then the decision was made weeks ago, at a kitchen table, by a parent who had nothing in front of them except an invoice.
This is the plan for the other version of that conversation. It runs from week 6 of Term 3 to the first day of Term 1, and every step is something a centre can do by hand this year. Where the platform makes a step automatic, it says so, but nothing here depends on it.
- Count last year's losses first. Most owners guess low.
- Start in Term 3 week 6, not Term 4. By Term 4 the quiet ones are gone.
- The lever is written proof of progress to the parent, regularly, from you.
- The holiday gap is where a wobbling family becomes a lost one. Fill it with one small thing.
- Track five numbers on a Friday. The gone-quiet list is the one that pays.
First, count last year
Before anything else, work out what happened last summer. Take the enrolment list from the end of Term 4 and the list from week 3 of Term 1. The difference is your number. Not the students who moved house or finished Year 12, the ones who could have stayed and didn't.
Most owners who do this for the first time are surprised. Whatever the count is, multiply it by your own annual fee and that is what walked out, with most of Term 1 spent replacing them. Put your own figures into the retention cost calculator and keep the number. It's the budget for everything below.
Why they leave, in the parent's words
Ask a parent who left and you'll hear one of three things.
"We weren't sure it was making a difference." Nothing they could see, so nothing they could point to.
"She was doing the work but we never heard anything." Work went into a bag and came back marked, sometimes, and nobody told the parent what it meant.
"It just lapsed over the holidays." No contact from December to February, and by February the routine was gone.
None of those is about the teaching. All three are about what the parent could see between sessions, which for most centres is nothing. A parent who can't see progress assumes there isn't any. That's the whole problem, and it's fixable.
The timeline
| When | Do this | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Term 3, week 6 | List every student with no completed work in the last fortnight. Call two parents. | The gone-quiet list. Five weeks' notice on who won't be back. |
| Term 3, week 8 | Send every parent a written note on what improved this term. Not an invoice. | The first piece of proof most parents have ever had from you. |
| Term 3, week 10 | Ask the three most engaged parents what they'd tell a friend. Write it down. | You'll use their words in Term 4. |
| Term 4, week 1 | Put the re-enrolment form in every parent's hand with the term summary attached. | Proof first, ask second. |
| Term 4, week 3 | Call every family that hasn't returned the form. Ask what would make it a yes. | Not a sales call. A question. |
| Term 4, week 6 | One more written progress note, shorter. Name the skill for Term 1. | Gives the parent a reason the holiday matters. |
| Term 4, last week | Confirm the Term 1 class, day and time for every returning student. | A booked slot is harder to drop than a vague intention. |
| December | One message, one piece of holiday work, one date for Term 1. | Fills the gap. Keeps the routine alive. |
| Mid-January | A short note: here's what we'll start with in week 1. | The family that's wobbling remembers why they enrolled. |
| Term 1, week 1 | Welcome back, and the first fortnightly report goes out in week 2. | The cycle starts again, earlier this time. |
The Term 4 retention checklist has this as a printable page with a box beside each line.
Term 3, week 6: the gone-quiet list
This is the step that pays for the whole plan. Sit down with the homework record, or the pile of sheets, and list every student who hasn't handed anything back in two weeks. Then list every student whose parent hasn't replied to anything this term.
Those two lists overlap, and the overlap is your Term 4 losses, five weeks early.
Call two of those parents this week. Not to sell anything. To ask how things are going and whether the homework is landing. You'll hear about a busy sport season, a new sibling, a change of school. Sometimes you'll hear the real thing: "honestly, we're not sure it's working." That's the conversation you want in week 6, not the silence you'd get in Term 4.
On the platform this list builds itself. The tutor dashboard shows students with no activity for two weeks, and the owner sees it across every class. By hand it takes an hour. Do it anyway.
Term 3, week 8: the progress note
Most parents have never received a written word from their child's tutoring centre that wasn't a bill. Change that in week 8.
One page, or one email. What their child worked on this term. What got better, specifically. What's next. Two sentences from you, in your words, about this child. Sign it with your name.
Specific is the whole point. "Priya is doing well" is nothing. "Priya's accuracy on adding fractions with unlike denominators went from about one in four to two in three, which is the skill we spent three Tuesdays on" is proof, and it's proof the parent can repeat to the other parent, to a grandparent, to a friend at the school gate.
If you don't have the data to be specific, that's worth knowing too. It means work is going out and coming back without anyone recording what it showed. The parent report template is the one-page layout with a filled example.
Term 4, week 1: proof first, ask second
The standard re-enrolment email is an invoice with a deadline. Sent cold, it reads as a bill, and a bill is something you can decide not to pay.
Send it differently. The term summary goes first, on top, with the specific improvement named. Then the form. Then the deadline, with a reason: "so I can hold her Tuesday spot."
The order matters more than the wording. A parent who has just read that their child's accuracy doubled on a named skill is reading the form in a different mood from a parent who's opened a bill.
The re-enrolment email templates have seven versions of this, including the one for the parent who has been quiet all term.
Term 4, week 3: the call that isn't a sales call
Every family that hasn't returned the form gets a call. Not a chase. A question: what would make it a yes?
You'll get four answers. Money, which is real, and worth knowing. Timetable, which you can often fix. "We're not sure it's working," which the week 8 note should have addressed, and if it didn't, ask what they'd want to see. And silence, which is a no you should accept warmly and ask to come back to in Term 1.
Log each answer in a sentence. After thirty of these, the pattern tells you what to change next year.
December and January: the gap
The family that's wobbling in November becomes a lost family in January for one reason: nothing happened for six weeks. The routine broke, the child stopped thinking about it, and the parent found a reason not to restart.
Fill the gap with one small thing. One message in December with one piece of holiday work, ten minutes' worth, and the Term 1 start date. One short note in mid-January saying what week 1 will cover. That's it. Two touches. Enough to keep the thread, not enough to be a nuisance.
On the platform, a holiday set from your own material is assigned in three clicks and marked when it's done, so the January note can say "thanks for the holiday work, here's where we'll pick up." By hand, a photocopied sheet in an envelope does the job.
The five Friday numbers
Retention is a habit, not a campaign. Five numbers, every Friday, on a whiteboard:
| Number | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Students with completed work this week | Whether the six days are being used |
| Students gone quiet for two weeks | Next term's losses, early |
| Parents contacted this fortnight, in writing | Whether proof is going out |
| Re-enrolment forms returned (Term 4 only) | Where you stand |
| Families with no next date | The ones drifting |
The last one is the sharpest. A family with a booked Term 1 slot, a confirmed class and a known start date is enrolled. A family with none of those is a maybe, whatever they said.
What this looks like with the platform
Everything above can be done by hand, and this year it probably should be. But it's worth seeing what changes when the work students do lives on a system built from your own material.
The gone-quiet list appears on the tutor dashboard every Monday without anyone compiling it. The progress note goes to every parent every second Friday, automatically, with your logo, from your address, with the specific improvement by topic pulled from the work the student actually did. The term summary at the end of Term 3 is a one-click version of the twenty fortnightly reports that came before it. The holiday work is assigned in three clicks and marked when it's done.
The plan stays the same. The hours come out of it.
This week
Count last year's losses. Write the number down. Open the checklist, put it on the wall, and find week 6 of Term 3 on the calendar. If it's already passed, start at the next line. The plan works from wherever you pick it up.