A family that's wobbling in November becomes a lost family in late January, and the reason is almost never a decision. It's six weeks in which nothing happened.
What six weeks of silence does
Term 4 ends. The last class is a bit loose, there's a chocolate or two, the form has been signed or hasn't. Then December, and Christmas, and a trip to the coast, and January, and the school lists, and somewhere in there the child stops thinking about tutoring because nothing has reminded them of it.
The parent doesn't decide to leave. They just don't restart. By the time the Term 1 invoice arrives they've had six weeks to build a reason, and a reason always turns up: the new sport, the cost of the school year, a child who says "do I have to". Silence gave them the room.
That's the mechanism. A wobble in November is recoverable. A wobble plus six weeks of nothing is a loss, and you find out in week 2 of Term 1 when the chair is empty.
Two touches, not a campaign
The fix is small, and it's small on purpose. Two contacts across the break. Not a newsletter, not a holiday program, not a sale.
| When | What | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Second week of December | One message. One piece of holiday work. The Term 1 start date. | Keeps the routine alive. Gives the child something of yours to do. |
| Mid-January | One short note: here's what week 1 will cover, and thanks for the holiday work. | The wobbling family remembers why they enrolled. |
Two is the number. One touch is a Christmas card. Three starts to feel like chasing. Two, spaced a month apart, is a centre that's still there.
One small piece of holiday work
The holiday work has one job, and it isn't learning. It's to keep a thread between the child and your centre across the break.
So it's ten minutes' worth, not an hour. One set from your own material, on the skill you'll open Term 1 with. If week 1 is fractions, it's a fractions set. Something the child can finish in a sitting and something you can pick up in the first class: "who did the holiday sheet? Good. Question 4 is what we're doing today."
From your own material matters. It's the same worksheets they've seen all year, in the same voice, with the same layout. A generic holiday pack from somewhere else is a different product from a different place, and it doesn't connect to Tuesday.
By hand, it's a photocopied sheet in an envelope with the December message. On the platform it's a holiday set assigned in three clicks from classes and assignments, marked when it's done, so the January note can say "thanks for the holiday work" to the families who did it and "here's where we'll start" to the ones who didn't.
One date
The single most useful thing in the December message is the Term 1 start date, with the class, day and time.
A date turns a vague intention into a booking. "We'll see how we go in the new year" is how families leave. "Maya's back on Tuesday 3 February at 4:30" is how they stay. Put it in writing, put it in the December message and again in January, and make it specific enough to go on a fridge.
If you confirmed the slot in the last week of Term 4, the December message repeats it. If you didn't, this is where it happens.
The January note
Mid-January, one short message. Three lines is plenty.
What week 1 will cover. A thank-you for the holiday work, if it came back. The start date, one more time.
That's it. No attachment, no offer, no form. Its job is to arrive in the week the parent is buying school shoes and thinking about the year, and to be the thing that puts your centre back in the picture before a reason not to restart has fully formed.
The Term 4 retention checklist has both messages as lines on the calendar, with a box beside each. The re-enrolment email templates have them written out, including the text-message versions for the parent who doesn't open email.
The family that was wobbling
Go back to the November wobble. Work stopped coming back, the parent went quiet, the form came in late or not at all.
With silence, that family is gone by February. With the two touches, they've received something of yours in December, the child has done ten minutes on your worksheet, the parent has a date on the fridge and a note in January saying what's coming. None of that is a sales pitch. All of it is a centre that noticed them over the break.
Not every wobbling family stays. But the ones that leave now leave on a decision, not a drift, and a decision is something you can ask about in the week 3 phone call.
What to do this week
Pick the skill you'll open Term 1 with and pull one set from your own material. Write the December message: the set, the start date, the class time. Put the January note on the calendar now so it doesn't get lost in the week you're on holiday yourself. If you counted last summer's losses, that number is the reason to do it. If you didn't, count them first.