Jesuïtes Educació: the digital ecosystem that changed the course of the education sector

Jesuïtes Educació is the Society of Jesus foundation that runs the eight Jesuit schools in Catalonia: Bellvitge, Casp, El Clot, Gràcia, Lleida, Poble Sec, Sant Gervasi and Sarrià. A network with over 14,500 students and over 2,000 educators, from early years to baccalaureate and vocational training, united by the same Ignatian-inspired educational project. In 2014 the Fundació ran a tender to renew its online presence and that of its schools, and we won it against three other agencies.

At that time schools, in Catalonia and across Spain, paid little attention to their digital presence. Classrooms filled themselves, often with siblings of existing students, and there was no need to compete online for families' attention. Until it started to get harder to fill the places.

The schools had very basic websites, often built by a teacher with some technical knowledge, that explained little more than where the school was and a few activities. None had a commercial purpose. But families were already factoring the schools' websites into their decision process: they wanted to find in them a reflection of what their children would experience at school, and to quickly and easily reach the facilities, the educational approach, the values, what sets each school apart and its services. And this had to be done for eight schools and the Fundació, without multiplying costs or teams.

Our technical analysis was clear: building an independent website for each school wasn't efficient, in cost or in operation. We proposed a Drupal architecture that was little used at the time, Domain: a single installation in which each school manages its own users and content, while the Fundació's Marketing and Communication team manages all the sites transversally and decides what content is featured on each one. A single platform to maintain and host, with each school keeping its own voice.

On that basis we conceptualised, designed and developed the Fundació's website and those of its schools, published in 2015: an honest, appealing, usable and fast online presence, designed for the first time to recruit students, with a positive image of children and young people who don't just learn, but grow. That same year we created the Vocational Training website, another pioneering project that presented vocational training on a par with conventional and even university education, as a great opportunity for the future.

Alongside this we defined the Fundació's and its schools' digital and social media strategy, built on three pillars: brand, recruitment and advocacy. We built family profiles from real data, a content plan with ten content types and the channels for the Fundació, for vocational training and for each school, and reinforced key moments of the school year, such as open days and enrolment periods, with search campaigns. All of it measured with KPIs and a monthly dashboard.

The relationship kept growing: in 2020 we completely redesigned the ecosystem for any screen, kept the platform running under a service level agreement, and in 2024 we rethought the social media strategy so the schools themselves would create content, with more video and AI tools, starting with two pilot schools.