It wasn’t so long ago that independent schools would make a custom of bringing parents on campus several times through the academic year. Over coffee and baked goods, educators would pass along need-to-know information and improve connection with families.

Covid broke this tradition, and online meetings became the new norm for parent gatherings. Today, parents expect hybrid meetings — in-person events that also offer the option of watching from home or the office, through livestreams.

This has been a tough turn for schools: Parent events are now more complex; the task of arranging livestreams has become a significant new duty and expense.

Within the demand for online viewing, though, lies an opportunity: Could a school produce information in the manner that parents or other constituents say they’d prefer — making it accessible on their schedule, not the school’s? And what if this material could simultaneously strengthen the school’s video library?

Enter the humble webinar.

There’s power in a presentation

In recognizing and capitalizing on the possibilities of webinars, independent education is far behind the for-profit world.

Three-quarters of companies make a habit of presenting them, according to a recent report by the video marketing firm Wistia, with monthly publication the most common cadence. The recordings are then showcased online.

Why? Because audiences commonly watch webinars live, then rewatch them later: A third of recordings still draw viewers three months after broadcast, and even lengthy presentations of more than an hour continue to hold long-term value.

As one Wistia contributor put it, “Live webinars are for connecting with your audience, and replays are for teaching them.”

Recordings can be gently spruced up afterward to improve their online appeal. Chapter tags will allow viewers to jump to sections that interest them. Adding closed captions is another way to hold a viewer’s attention.

And webinars repurpose easily into shorter clips for emails, blogs, social media and other platforms. The net effect boosts visibility, community understanding and connection.

How schools especially gain

Schools have more opportunity than most with webinars, Wistia suggests, since educational videos are great at building trust.

The medium enables school leaders to promote their expertise and underscore their authority. Presenters become more approachable: A lectern distances a speaker from the audience; webinars remove that barrier. And video and audio quality shines when recorded up-close than from a distance.

What’s more, webinar recordings extend a school’s content library beyond day-in-the-life clips, graduation ceremonies and high-end admission videos.

In fact, webinars could be the entry point into video for a school that likes the idea of multimedia content but is put off by the equipment, expertise and time necessary.

A webinar offers a much gentler learning curve — Zoom and Microsoft Teams are both familiar technology — and requires less pre-production than a typical video.

But don’t mistake “less” for “none.” A presentation still needs a tight script and ways to keep the audience engaged, such as Q&A breaks or polling the audience about the material.

The script can also anticipate natural places to edit in post-production, such as where chapters belong or where to look for snippets for social media.

Webinars generally benefit from having both a presenter and a community moderator, the latter admitting the audience and dealing with any questions or chat comments.

An engaging alternative to eblasts

The topics for presentation are almost endless, ranging from:

• The pressing (Why we need your student’s health forms now);
• To the academic (Why the Harkness model works well for our school);
• To the perennial (Why the school asks for donations on top of tuition; how you can find contact information for other families in your class);
• To the niche and topical (What parents should know about homecoming).

Speaking of niche topics, a webinar series devoted to prospective and/or incoming parents would help these families learn the school’s procedures and customs while putting faces and voices with campus names. The combination can build strong affinity from the outset.

For the school getting several questions on a particular matter, webinars offer a way to address the situation forthrightly and more efficiently than through a procession of emails or phone calls.

How should a school evaluate the success of its webinars? Wistia suggests several metrics:

• Registrations
• Live attendance
• Questions from the audience/other engagement indicators
• Recording views

Of course, each campus will also have its own way of measuring these presentations.

Don’t set your sights too high: The company reports that fewer than half of registrants show up for the broadcast. That said, attendees tend to stick around for the entire time, rarely ducking out early. And recordings that impress the audience will find word-of-mouth boosting follow-up watch counts.

As for where to post recordings and shorter clips, there’s no need for a hard-and-fast rule: They could go on the parent portal when privacy is a concern; otherwise, they could go on the website if prospective parents would benefit from the information, too. If a particular recording doesn’t work as well as hoped, simply set it aside, never posting it anywhere.

Take a look this summer at how a small series of presentations can showcase your school’s expertise and fit into broader communications plans in the months ahead.

Don’t-miss clicks

• Congratulations to the 25 independent schools that earned recognition in the 2026 CASE Circle of Excellence Awards! This is annually one of the hardest awards for a K-12 school to receive: Only 6% of this year’s honors went to such institutions.
  • The Miller School of Albemarle, a 255-student day-boarding school in Virginia, took top honors in the Video category — beating out universities and colleges — with this annual fund appeal. The award also serves to highlight the terrific video storytelling MSA has been producing for a couple years.
  • Also winning a Grand Gold was The Lawrenceville School, in the Independent and International School Magazine category, for its Lawrentian magazine. We’ve highlighted The Lawrentian in Refill before, and this is its third Circle of Excellence honor in five years.
  • Six schools won multiple awards this year: The American School of Guatemala; Milton Academy; North Country School; Northfield Mount Hermon School; The Potomac School; and The Webb School.

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