Enrollment and program performance review

A community martial arts school running children's, youth and adult programs saw registrations fall across every age group while the weekly schedule kept growing. Leadership had several competing explanations: pricing, competition, scheduling, marketing, instructor changes and program quality.

What should the organization change before the next registration cycle to address the decline?

• Treated each leadership explanation as a hypothesis to test
• Reviewed four years of registration, capacity, tuition and cancellation data
• Traced the path from website visit to trial inquiry, attended trial and paid registration
• Compared retention by age group and reviewed available withdrawal reasons
• Scanned local pricing and program structure for comparison
• Stated the limits of the evidence: withdrawal reasons existed for only 41% of departing learners

• Executive summary with one overall finding and five ranked priorities
• Funnel analysis showing where prospective learners were lost before trial
• Retention analysis by age group with known withdrawal reasons
• Capacity analysis showing how the schedule amplified the decline
• Financial implication model and a 90-day implementation sequence
• A short measure set for the next registration cycle

1. 1.The decline was an acquisition problem, not a quality problem

   New registrations fell 41% while returning learners held steady at 74% term-over-term. Trial-to-paid conversion stayed at 68%, in line with the four-year average.

2. 2.Most prospective learners were lost before the trial

   Of 1,040 website visits to the trial page, 214 submitted an inquiry and 96 attended a trial. The inquiry form asked for 11 fields and responses took an average of 2.6 days.

3. 3.The schedule amplified the decline

   52 weekly classes ran at 47% average capacity. Eleven sections held four or fewer learners, and those sections accounted for 68% of cancellations.

4. 4.Price was not the barrier

   Tuition sat mid-range against five comparable local schools; the two cheaper schools were also losing enrollment.

5. 5.Consolidation protected revenue

   Merging eleven under-filled sections modelled a $34,000 annual instructional saving with no learner displacement, funding a simplified intake and a re-registration push.

The organization could stabilize the existing program before adding offerings or changing price: simplify the path into a trial, consolidate under-filled sections, make re-registration an active part of the term, and collect consistent exit data.

The review recommended against a curriculum redesign. Learner satisfaction was strong and trial-to-paid conversion had held. Naming what is not the problem is part of the work.