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Pardon my provincialism, but...

One way to cope with many of the issues that lead  to declining school
numbers: spend more resources pushing your outreach program.

Between bus costs, time spent booking the busses, time spent getting the
field trip permission slips, time spent traveling on the busses, plus
the cost per student of outreach vs in-house programs at the museum....
outreach starts looking pretty good.

Not that I'm biased or anything.

Jonah Cohen
Outreach & Public Programs Manager
The Children's Museum
Chair, National Education Outreach Network

"Burning garbage makes smoke, which floats up to the sky where it
becomes stars."
"That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about stars to
dispute it."

-----Original Message-----
Hi all,

Last spring we did some focus group research with teachers (a
combination of loyal and lapsed customers) to try to understand factors
that may be contributing to declining attendance from this important
stakeholder group.  Unfortunately, our findings showed that there were a
number of things that contributed to teachers not getting out of the
classroom as much (ie. no silver bullet - darn!), some
of which are quite outside of our control (cost of buses). 

I know a general decline in attendance is being seen at other
institutions, and maybe to science centres/museums as a whole.  I'm
interested in hearing from others regarding attendance trends from this
particular market.  Has anyone else done research to try to identify
specific issues/reasons for the decline/potential opportunities? Has
anyone introduced new programming or models of engagement
that are seeing positive results re student numbers? 

Thanks in advance for your responses. 
Catherine

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Catherine Paisley
Vice-President, Science Education
Ontario Science Centre
416-696-3295
[log in to unmask]
www.ontariosciencecentre.ca

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