Student
recruitment.

Every type of provider recruits from a different place, which is why a recruitment plan copied from a university rarely suits an RTO in Gosford or an independent school in Newcastle. Schools mostly win families through people and visits, which the how families choose page covers. Vocational students more often start with a search, a job ad that names a qualification, or an employer. University applicants move to the admissions calendar.

International recruitment is its own world. The same 2018 data showed agents were involved in 86% of English language course enrolments and 73% of university enrolments. It's older data, and agent rules have tightened since, but most international enquiries still reach you through an agent, so your agents' marketing is effectively your own. The international students page covers the agent rules.

The most common recruitment report I see counts form fills by channel. It looks busy and tells you almost nothing. A lead form inside Facebook can fill a spreadsheet with people who tapped twice and forgot about it, while a single search for 'Certificate III in Individual Support Newcastle' from someone ready to start next month is worth twenty of them.

So track each enquiry to the end: enquired, spoke to someone, applied, enrolled, still enrolled after census date or the first term. Then compare sources on enrolments, not on cost per enquiry. Cheap enquiries usually stay cheap for a reason.

Bought leads deserve extra care. Course comparison and lead-selling sites will happily sell you names, but the ACMA puts the responsibility for consent on whoever uses a list, even one someone else collected. If the person didn't agree to hear from you by name, the lead isn't one you can market to.

Most people enquiring about a course are asking more than one provider. The one that answers first, with a real answer, usually gets the conversation. Aim for the same working day, and for anything that arrives after hours, an automatic reply that says who will call and when.

International enquiries add a clock problem. In daylight saving, Bogotá is 16 hours behind Sydney and Mumbai five and a half hours behind, so an enquiry sent after dinner there lands in your inbox while you sleep. If your team answers it at 3pm Sydney time, the student may not see it until the next day. A short reply first thing, and a call booked for their evening, closes most of that gap.

The reply itself matters as much as the speed. Answer the question they asked, give the fees, the next start date and one next step. A PDF brochure on its own isn't an answer.

A student's value is the margin over their whole enrolment, not the first invoice, and some of the best new enquiries come from former students and their families. The budget page has a calculator for the ceiling. The point here is simpler: a source that brings fewer enquiries but more enrolled, retained students deserves more of the budget, even if its cost per enquiry looks high.

Emails, texts and instant messages that market a course are commercial electronic messages. Under the Spam Act they need consent, clear identification of the sender and an unsubscribe that works, actioned within 5 working days. Education has an exemption: the ACMA lists education institutions contacting someone as a current or former student among those who can send marketing without consent, as long as their contact details are included. It doesn't cover people who only enquired, bought lists, or another business's offer.

Calls work the same way. Under the Do Not Call Register Act, calls from an educational institution to a private number where the account-holder or someone in the household is or was enrolled there are exempt from the register. Everyone else on the register needs to have agreed to calls. Exempt or not, the ACMA says callers keep to set hours: 9 till 8 on weekdays, 9 till 5 on Saturdays, and never on a Sunday or a national public holiday.

Privacy law sits on top. Providers with more than $3 million in turnover must follow APP 7, which needs a simple way to opt out of direct marketing. In NSW, public schools are different again: the Department of Education says its personal information is handled under the NSW PPIP Act and HRIP Act rather than the federal principles. And for international students, Standard 1 of the National Code requires accurate marketing, whoever sends it.