Admissions and Parent Support Manager

Job Description: Admissions and Parent Support Manager

Reporting to: Operations Director

Location: West London - with some travel to various Ark Start sites

Contract Type: Permanent

Pattern: Full-time (37.5 hrs per week)

Salary: c. £40,000 (depending on qualifications and experience)

About the role:

We are looking to recruit an Admissions and Parent Support Manager to join the Ark Start Team. The successful candidate will excel in a range of different duties including team management, communicating with external and internal stakeholders, driving admissions for the nurseries and ensuring consistent processes across the team, while demonstrating high levels of attention to detail in their work.

Ark Start have 5 nurseries in South & West London and are planning to add more settings over the next year. This role will lead a team of 2 admissions and customer services officers and will also take responsibility for supporting individual nurseries with admissions.

The role would suit a highly organised and numerate manager who would thrive working with a range of different people in a dynamic and fast-growing organisation.

Key responsibilities

Management of the Admissions & Customer Services Team

• Take responsibility for admissions systems, ensuring they are up-to-date and support efficiency across the team
• Take responsibility for communications templates, process plans and keeping the admissions handbook updated
• Manage weekly occupancy meetings to ensure appropriate approval and communication of all bookings
• Calculate occupancy and spaces across the nurseries, ensuring the team are clear on what offers can be made
• Work with the finance team to ensure write-off procedures and approvals are followed and minimised
• Support the team to manage workload and priorities, including support and cover across all Ark Start nurseries, as required
• Manage systems and processes set-up for new nursery openings Implement local marketing initiatives (eg. attending school fairs, distributing leaflets, liaising with local organisations for promotion) and work with the Ark Digital Marketing team (for website and social media activity) in order to fill nurseries to target capacity

Admissions Process with Parents & Nurseries

• Take the lead on delivering admissions and customer service for up to 3 nurseries, while managing oversight and cover for all nurseries.
• Communicate with parents by phone and email
• Take responsibility for Ark
• Start general communications, ensuring queries are answered, or directed to the appropriate member of staff for follow up
• Liaise with nursery Area Leads and the Director of Early years to ensure information is correct and customer requirements are met
• Keep the management information system up to date
• Review and send monthly invoices, generated by the system, and answer any queries from parents about charging
• Oversee weekly catering orders, ensuring parent requirements are reflected and match parent invoices
• Resolve initial complaints and queries, escalating when necessary
• Manage communications with parents to ensure outstanding payments are followed up and processes amended, where applicable, to minimise debt levels

Reporting & Data Analysis

• Collate benchmarking information, and report, on local fees to support the pricing strategies across the nurseries
• Review weekly debt reports, to support communications with parents, and produce summary reports to feed into monthly management accounts
• Analyse catering requirements, orders and actual distribution to minimise waste and improve ordering efficiency
• Report regularly to nursery managers and SLT on enquiry status, occupancy and forecasts to support decision making
• Prepare monthly reports on enquiries to share, and review, with the digital marketing team, proposing marketing targets and strategies (eg. through website, social media, local events) to increase occupancy
• Prepare monthly occupancy reports, including forecasting, to include in SLT reporting and support budget preparation