Charity
Schools have been back for a couple of weeks now. Colleges and universities are close behind. For anyone working in education marketing or comms, that means the cycle starts again: enrolment, events, signage, prospectuses, and all the print that has to be right, on time, every time.
Most of the education teams we work with are small, stretched, and juggling print alongside everything else on their plate, so it's rarely a lack of effort that causes problems.
It's usually one of a handful of things that quietly get overlooked every year.
Here are five of the most common:
1. Lead times built around the wrong calendar
Print deadlines rarely match up neatly with the academic calendar. Open days, enrolment weeks and induction packs all have fixed dates that don't move, but the print behind them often gets planned in the same rush as everything else that week.
Building print into the calendar at the start of term, rather than the week before an event, is the single easiest way to avoid a last-minute scramble.
2. Version control across sites
For colleges and multi-campus schools, it's easy for one site to be working from an updated prospectus while another is still using last term's version. Nobody does this on purpose. It happens when local teams order what they have on hand, rather than what's current.
Without a shared, controlled way to order, small inconsistencies build up fast, and they're the kind of thing prospective students and parents do notice.
3. What happens when you run out mid-term
Running out of a key item like exercise books is a common and avoidable problem.
A simple stock view across the year, rather than ordering in reaction to what's just run out, removes most of this pressure.
4. Who actually signs off
In a lot of education settings, print approval sits across marketing, admin and senior leadership, without a clear line of who signs off what. That's not a criticism; it's just how small teams work but it's often the real reason a job gets delayed, not the printing itself.
A clear, agreed approval step before anything goes to print saves time further down the line.
5. How much is actually being wasted
Over-ordering "just in case" is common in education, particularly for termly materials that go out of date quickly. Boxes of last year's prospectus or outdated signage end up in a cupboard, then in the bin.
Ordering more accurately, closer to when materials are actually needed, is a straightforward way to reduce that waste, without needing a big sustainability initiative to do it.
None of this is about doing more. It's usually about removing a bit of friction from a process that's already working hard enough.
If any of this sounds familiar, we're happy to talk through what a simpler process could look like for your team.
