Consider the parents’ evening. Consider the open day when prospective new parents visit the school. Consider the school minibus.

Now at first sight there may not seem to be much that links the school minibus with the days when parents and prospective parents are in your school.

But if you’ve got a smart, clean minibus with the school’s logo on the side parked just beyond the door that the parents will enter, you are making quite a statement.  A statement that says, “this school is involved in the education of the whole child – we go beyond the classroom.”

Of course, it is possible to go a lot further.  Having got your smart and clean minibus in the car park, the next thing you should ensure you do is have a picture of it (with students inside, waving – but obviously not leaning – out of the windows) and put that in the prospectus.

You can put the minibus on your website too – indeed it is increasingly common to feature the minibus with students on the home page of the website. 

What such pictures say is, “This school is adventurous.  This school has activities beyond the classroom.  This school lays on extra-curricular activities.”  Of course, to you it might just be a picture of a minibus with students in it, but still it does carry all these messages.

And, as always, if the picture clearly shows the bus with the school’s crest and name on the side, so much the better.

Next, in both the printed prospectus and on the website you can put further information concerning the use of the bus, the clubs and lessons that benefit from it, and so forth.

Of course, if your minibus is rather old and looking the worse for wear (or indeed if you don’t yet have a minibus) there is a problem – but it is easily one that can be overcome.

Because there is no need to save school funds to buy a minibus.  The easiest route forward is to lease the minibus.  In this way you get the funding  spread over a number of years plus the bus serviced on a regular basis.

If you’d like to know more about leasing a minibus for your school do take a look at our website at www.minibusleasing.co.uk/school-minibus.php

If you would like more information please email us at Minibus@benchmarkleasing.co.uk or call us on 01753 859 944.

If, however, you would like to go back and read our past commentaries these are on www.minibusleasingblog.co.uk/

Schools lease minibuses in order to get their students from one place to another – that goes without saying.

But it is sometimes easy to forget that the minibus will always be available to play a second part in the school’s life – that of publicity.

The most obvious element in this is the fact that it is possible to put the school’s name and logo on the sides of the bus.  If the bus looks clean, modern and smart (as of course it will if you lease a minibus) then whenever and wherever the bus is seen in your neighbourhood, it is an advert for the school.

Quite simply it says, “this school has a quality minibus”.  (It says “quality” because many people equate quality with cleanliness.  They shouldn’t do, but they do).

 However that is only the start.  Having got your minibus on the road, the next thing you should ensure you do is have a picture of it (with students in it, waving out of the windows) and put that in the prospectus. 

 On your website there is the opportunity to have several pictures of the minibus in use. 

 What these pictures say is, “This school is adventurous.  This school has activities beyond the classroom.  This school lays on extra-curricula activities.”  Of course it is just a picture of a minibus with students in it, but still it does carry all these messages.

 If the picture clearly shows the bus with the school’s crest and name on the side, so much the better.

 Next, in both the printed prospectus and on the website you can put further information concerning the use of the bus, the clubs and lessons that benefit from it, and so forth.

 All of this differentiates your school not just from the school that doesn’t have a minibus, but from the schools that have a minibus but don’t make much out of the fact.

 In short, all you have to do is four things.  

1. Keep the bus clean, so when it is seen out and about it is a credit to your school.
2. Put the logo and name on the bus, so everyone can recognise the school from the bus.
3. Take pictures of the bus with students looking cheerful.
4. Use the pictures on your web site and in the prospectus

And then, having done all that, you move on to the next stage, which involves having the bus parked in a prominent position on open days and parents evenings, so it can be seen, send press releases to the local paper each time the bus is used for a particular special activity, and mention the bus when prospective parents are being shown round the school.

In short, your bus becomes a primary marketing tool for the school.

There are two very different ways of deciding who should use the school minibus and for what.

For most of us, the use of the minibus is obvious. A school team has an away fixture, and has to get to the ground where the match is played.  The obvious solution is to use the school minibus.

The school doesn’t have its own swimming pool, but there is one that can be hired for school use just three miles away. On Mondays half the class go for their swimming lesson, on Thursday’s the other half goes.  In each case the minibus can take the group.

But there is another way of using the minibus – an approach that creates journeys because the minibus is there – and which ultimately enhances the quality of education and experience offered by the school.

Take for example the school that has a lunchtime chess club. The club takes place in one classroom, there’s never any trouble, and a small group of enthusiasts turn up and play their games on allocated days.

No one has ever thought of running a school chess team – since that would mean arranging events away from the school. And yet with the minibus and either a parent or a member of staff who is keen on the game, this could be arranged. Suddenly the school has one more activity on offer, and the opportunity to extend the skills of the best players in the school.

Or, to give a different example, one school had struggled with its end of term plays, Christmas carol service, and so on, because the hall and the staging that it had available were quite inadequate and inappropriate for the sort of events that were wanted.

Although it was possible to put on the final events at a neighbouring school, getting the students to the final rehearsals was always problematic, and so the arrangement of sharing the facilities of the local school was ultimately dropped.

It was not until two years after a minibus was brought into the school that the idea arose that this policy could be re-thought, that the sharing of the nearby school’s facilities could resume. Now the students could be taken to the neighbouring school for rehearsals in the minibus. As before parents and relatives could be used to get the pupils to the actual performance.

There are a lot of reasons to see the minibus not just as a way to solve obvious issues, but as a way to expand the range of activities the school takes on.

Once the bus is there, all sorts of previously unthought of possibilities arise.