Choosing an international school has never been a simple decision for families. It shapes a child’s day-to-day life, their long-term opportunities and often the rhythm of the whole family. Until recently, most schools have only had a vague picture of how parents actually research their options. The sector has relied on assumptions, anecdotal evidence, or the odd survey. Good intentions, but not always great insight.
This is where doris steps in. With more than a million individual data points collected in just a few months, we now have real behavioural evidence that reveals how parents think, compare and decide. There's nothing like this in the international school sector.
During a recent webinar, the doris team walked through five insights that every international school in South East Asia should understand. These insights reflect how modern, mobile, globally mixed families make decisions today.
Here is a deep dive into what the data shows and how schools can use it to strengthen marketing, cut through the noise and support families better from the very beginning of their journey.
Most schools already assume many prospective parents will use their phone to research schools during the discovery journey, but the data shows something even more important. Parents are often discovering schools on small mobile devices. Think iPhone SE size. This matters because many school websites, even well designed ones, break or become hard to use when shrunk down to a truly small screen.
Buttons disappear or become unclickable. Chatbots cover half the page. Pop ups block most of the content. Hero banners that look elegant on a wide monitor collapse into something messy and confusing. The result is a first impression that feels clunky instead of confident.
Parents researching international schools are also the same people booking holidays on top hospitality sites or buying premium goods on sleek, mobile-first platforms. If their first experience with your school feels awkward and clunky, you risk losing them before you even know they exist.
What schools can do
Use your analytics platform to review which exact devices parents browse on.
Use the mobile preview function in browsers Chrome to test common devices at your real breakpoints.
Challenge your web agency to design mobile first, or at least make sure the website is fully optimised for mobile, and prove it with real examples.
Check your chatbots, banners and key buttons on the smallest devices.
A school only gets one chance at that first moment of connection. A consistent experience across devices makes you match the standard parents expect.
Many schools focus on a tight set of “obvious competitors”. The data tells a very different story. In the early discovery phase, parents browse and compare a long list of options.
More than 90 percent of users compare at least five schools. Over half compare seven or more. 30% group compares more than fifteen (!) The average is around ten.
Families cast the net wide at the start. They are not yet thinking in the same neat categories you might see your school falling under, but exploring possibilities across price points, curricula and reputations.
Even more interesting, a school’s competitor set changes depending on where the parent is searching from. Parents in the UK compare a different cluster of schools than parents in New Zealand. In other words, your competition shifts by source market and is rarely fixed.
What schools can do
Build a broader view of your discovery-phase competitor set.
Explore parent conversations on Reddit, Facebook groups or Quora to see who you are considered alongside.
Develop positioning and messaging that speaks to the families who may not yet know you are a good fit.
Recognise that you lose influence if you only think about the three or four schools you know well.
Parents are forming impressions long before they appear in your admissions inbox. Understanding the real competitive landscape puts you ahead of the schools still guessing.
The classic funnel makes school discovery look clean and predictable. The real journey is anything but. Parents loop, pause, revisit, compare, forget and return. They come back to the same school profile multiple times over months. High-intent actions like booking a tour or downloading a prospectus appear late in the journey, not early.
This means parents form emotional connections before they ever show up as a lead. Your school is being evaluated long before anyone clicks a call to action.
What schools can do
Avoid “hard sell” marketing at the start of the journey. Parents are not ready to convert.
Shift more effort into helpful, trust-building content that answers real questions.
Improve the clarity and structure of top-of-funnel content so parents can skim quickly.
Treat performance marketing cautiously as a discovery tool. Parents need information first, motivation later.
Parents are making sense of their options. They want to feel informed, not pressured. The schools that respect this rhythm build trust earlier and convert more reliably later.
It seems obvious at first glance that different nationalities approach schooling differently. The insight from the data is that these differences are bigger than expected and have meaningful implications.
For example, when all global searches are combined, the average preferred fee appears around USD 17,000 to 18,000. Yet for families searching from the United States, the preferred average fee rises to around USD 24,000. That is a sizeable jump.
Curriculum preferences show a very similar pattern. When all markets are combined, IB and Cambridge are, unsurprisingly, the most common searches. But when filtered to UK families, the British curriculum suddenly dominates, and vocational options like BTEC appear more strongly.
Schools across Southeast Asia are already adjusting to demographic shifts as traditional Western expat populations decline. This nuance matters. A curriculum you assume is “less known” or popular may actually attract a specific nationality strongly once it is explained clearly. A fee level you think is high may be perfectly acceptable for a certain market segment.
What schools can do
Look closely at source-market differences rather than assuming all parents value the same things.
Test segmented messaging that reflects the needs and expectations of different groups.
Explore whether alternative curriculum pathways are better understood by some markets than others.
Use real parent feedback from your current families to enrich these patterns.
Understanding what families from different regions value helps schools frame their strengths more clearly, especially in crowded and fast-changing markets.
Fees, location and curriculum matter, but they are not the whole story. When parents browse school profiles, the data shows a high level of attention on community, history, parent associations, social and emotional learning, well being and additional learning support.
Combined, these softer areas attract as much attention as fees or location. Parents are looking for signals that show what the school feels like, how it supports children as people and what kind of community they will join.
Many schools bury this information under layers of menus. Many marketing campaigns focus heavily on superlatives like “holistic” or “world class”. But in reality, parents value authenticity. They want to see the real people, values and daily life behind the glossy language.
What schools can do
Pull community, support and well being content higher in your website structure.
Write ad copy that highlights human strengths rather than only prestige claims.
Make stories of culture, belonging and pastoral care more visible earlier in the journey.
Ensure key details like fees and location are still clear and easy to find; parents shouldn’t have to hunt.
In the end, parents choose a school that “feels like us”. These emotional cues matter as much as academics or facilities.
The international school sector in Southeast Asia is changing. Families are researching earlier, comparing more widely and expecting a smoother, clearer, kinder discovery experience. They want information that reflects their real needs. They want to trust the schools they short-list. And they want to feel seen.
The data from doris confirms what many schools have sensed but not been able to prove. With these insights, schools can sharpen their strategy, improve parent experience and stand out in a crowded market while staying true to who they are.
If you're interested in knowing more about parents are researching your school and who your competitors are, get in touch. We'll me more than happy to share those insights with you