Why Benchmarking Matters

A number on its own means very little. If someone tells you their class fill rate is 78%, is that good or bad? Without context, you cannot say. If it was 65% last year, 78% is excellent progress. If it was 90% last year, 78% is a serious decline. If the industry average for their activity type is 72%, they are outperforming. If it is 88%, they are underperforming.

Benchmarking provides that context. It turns raw metrics into actionable intelligence by placing your numbers alongside meaningful comparisons. There are two types of benchmarking, and both are valuable.

Internal benchmarking compares your current performance against your own past performance. This is the most reliable comparison because you are controlling for all the variables that make one business different from another: your location, your activity type, your pricing, your staff, your facilities.

External benchmarking compares your performance against industry averages or comparable businesses. This is less precise but helps you understand whether your levels of performance are broadly in line with what is achievable, or whether there is significant room for improvement.

The most effective approach uses both: internal benchmarking to track your trajectory, and external benchmarking to calibrate your ambition.

Internal Benchmarking: Comparing Your Own Periods

Internal benchmarking is the foundation. Before you look at anyone else, you need to understand your own trends.

Term-on-Term Comparison

Compare the same metrics across consecutive terms: fill rate, attendance, retention, revenue, and enquiry volume. This reveals short-term trends. A single-term decline might be noise; two consecutive terms of decline is a pattern that needs attention.

Be careful with term-on-term comparisons, however. Not all terms are equal. The autumn term is typically strongest for enrolment, the spring term for retention, and the summer term for attrition. Comparing autumn fill rates to summer fill rates will almost always show a decline, which is seasonal rather than problematic.

Year-on-Year Comparison

The most reliable internal benchmark compares the same period in the current year to the same period last year. Your September 2025 fill rate compared to your September 2024 fill rate controls for seasonal effects and gives you a genuine like-for-like comparison.

Track year-on-year changes for your key metrics:

Total enrolled participants (are you growing?)
Overall fill rate (is your capacity better utilised?)
Retention rate by cohort (are families staying longer?)
Revenue per participant (is your pricing effective?)
Enquiry-to-enrolment conversion (is your sales process improving?)

If all five are moving in the right direction year-on-year, your business is genuinely improving. If any are declining, that is where to focus attention.

Class-Level Comparison

Benchmark individual classes against each other and against their own history. Your Wednesday 4pm ballet class should be compared to itself last term and to your other ballet classes this term. This reveals whether a performance issue is class-specific (perhaps an instructor change) or systemic (across all classes of that type).

External Benchmarking: Industry Averages

External benchmarking is harder for children's activity businesses because the sector is fragmented and not well-researched compared to industries like retail or hospitality. However, some useful reference points exist.

Where to Find Benchmarks

National governing bodies: Organisations like Swim England, British Gymnastics, and The FA occasionally publish participation data and operational benchmarks. These are activity-specific and the most relevant external comparisons.
Industry associations: The Activity Providers Alliance and similar bodies commission surveys that provide aggregate data. These are broad but useful for directional guidance.
Franchise networks: If you are part of a franchise, your franchisor likely has benchmarks from across their network. This is some of the most useful external data available because the business model is standardised.
Management software providers: Platforms like AMES that serve many activity businesses can provide anonymised, aggregated benchmarks. This is increasingly the most comprehensive source of external comparison data.

Using External Benchmarks Wisely

Treat external benchmarks as directional indicators, not precise targets. A fill rate benchmark of 82% across a sample of swimming schools tells you the general range of what is achievable. It does not mean that your 76% is definitively poor or your 88% is definitively excellent, because the businesses in the sample may differ from yours in size, location, pricing, and dozens of other factors.

External benchmarks are most useful for identifying where you might be significantly underperforming. If the typical retention rate for your activity type is 85% and yours is 65%, that gap is large enough to be meaningful regardless of methodological differences. It warrants investigation even if you do not know the exact target.

Key Benchmarks: What to Measure

Fill Rate

Overall fill rate is the most widely available benchmark because it is simple and comparable.

Below 65%: Significant underutilisation. Your cost base is supporting capacity you are not using.
65-80%: Moderate. There is room to grow, and some classes are likely dragging down the average.
80-90%: Healthy. You are using your capacity well while maintaining room for new joiners.
Above 90%: Excellent utilisation, but you likely have unmet demand. Consider expansion.

Revenue per Head

Revenue per head (total revenue divided by total enrolled participants over a period) tells you how effectively you are monetising your participant base. This captures not just your base price but also any additional revenue from merchandise, events, holiday clubs, or grading fees.

Compare this year-on-year. If revenue per head is growing faster than your price increases, you are successfully adding value-added revenue. If it is growing slower than inflation, your real revenue per participant is declining.

Retention Rate

Benchmark your retention rate both internally (is it improving?) and externally (how does it compare to typical rates for your activity type?). See our detailed guide on Understanding and Improving Customer Retention for comprehensive benchmarks by activity type.

Operating Margin

Operating margin (operating profit divided by revenue, as a percentage) is the ultimate benchmark for business viability. For children's activity businesses:

Below 10%: Thin. You have very little buffer against unexpected costs or revenue dips.
10-20%: Moderate. Sustainable but limited room for investment in growth.
20-30%: Healthy. You can invest in growth, absorb setbacks, and build reserves.
Above 30%: Strong. But check that you are investing adequately in quality, staff, and facilities. Very high margins can sometimes indicate underinvestment that will cost you in retention later.

Operating margin varies enormously by business model. A provider who owns their venue has different cost structures from one who hires. An owner-operator has different staff costs from one with a team of employed instructors. Compare your margin year-on-year and against businesses with similar models.

Seasonal Adjustment: Comparing Like With Like

The single biggest mistake in benchmarking is comparing numbers from different seasons without adjustment. Every metric in an activity business has a seasonal pattern, and failing to account for this leads to false alarms and missed signals.

Common Seasonal Patterns

Enrolment: Peaks in September and January. Troughs in June-August for term-time activities.
Attendance: Drops in December (illness, holidays) and February (half-term). Peaks in October and March.
Enquiries: Surge in August-September as parents plan the new school year. Smaller surge in December-January.
Revenue: Follows enrolment patterns, with cash flow particularly affected by term payment collection dates.
Retention: Appears to drop in the summer term but often reflects natural end-of-year departures rather than dissatisfaction.

How to Adjust

The simplest and most effective seasonal adjustment for most activity businesses is same-period year-on-year comparison. Compare September 2025 to September 2024, not to July 2025. This automatically controls for seasonal effects.

For more sophisticated analysis, calculate a seasonal index: for each metric, work out the average value for each term over two or three years, then express each term as a percentage of the annual average. This gives you a multiplier. If your autumn term typically generates 35% of annual revenue, a year where it generates 33% is slightly below trend even if the absolute number is higher than last spring.

Using Benchmarks to Set Targets

Benchmarks become truly powerful when they inform target-setting. Rather than picking arbitrary goals, use your data to set targets that are ambitious but grounded in evidence.

The Three-Level Approach

Floor: The minimum acceptable level of performance. Below this, you need immediate corrective action. Set this at your worst recent performance minus a small buffer. If your lowest term-on-term retention in the past year was 78%, your floor might be 75%.
Target: What you are genuinely aiming for. Set this at your best recent performance or slightly above. If your best retention was 87%, target 88-90%.
Stretch: An aspirational goal that would represent exceptional performance. Set this at or above the external benchmark for top performers. If the best-in-class retention for your activity type is 93%, that is your stretch target.

Review targets each term. If you consistently hit your target, raise it. If you consistently miss it, investigate whether the target is unrealistic or whether there are addressable barriers.

Avoid Vanity Targets

A fill rate target of 100% sounds good but is actually undesirable: it means you have zero capacity for new joiners and probably have a long waitlist of frustrated families. A retention target of 100% is impossible because some families will always leave for reasons you cannot control. Set targets that are genuinely optimal, not just maximal.

How AMES Provides Automated Benchmarking

AMES automates the benchmarking process by continuously calculating your key metrics and comparing them across multiple dimensions.

Internal benchmarking is built into every metric display. When you view your fill rate, you see it alongside last term, the same term last year, and the rolling 12-month trend. Declining metrics are automatically flagged so you do not have to spot them yourself.

Class-level comparison ranks all your classes by each metric, making it immediately obvious which are performing above and below your average. You can sort by fill rate, retention, revenue per head, or attendance to identify your strongest and weakest sessions.

External benchmarking draws on anonymised, aggregated data from across the AMES platform to provide industry comparison points. These are broken down by activity type and business size so that comparisons are meaningful. You can see how your swimming school's retention compares to other swimming schools of similar size, not just to all activity businesses generically.

Seasonal adjustment is automatic. When AMES flags a metric as declining, it has already accounted for seasonal patterns. A drop in summer term enrolment that is consistent with the seasonal norm is not flagged. A drop that exceeds the seasonal norm is.

Benchmarking is not about proving you are the best. It is about understanding where you stand, identifying where you can improve, and setting targets grounded in reality. The activity businesses that benchmark consistently are the ones that improve consistently, because they always know exactly what needs attention next.