Admission Enquiry Form for Coaching and Tuition Classes: Free Format, Enquiry Register and Follow-Up Plan

Enquiry form or admission form: what each one is for

Many centres use one long form for everything. A parent walks in to ask about Class 10 maths, is handed four pages, and leaves half of it blank. Splitting the work into two forms fixes this. The enquiry form records interest. The admission form records a decision. Our guide to the coaching admission form covers the second one in full; this guide is about the first.

Keep them separate even if you run a small home tuition. Most admissions are lost quietly between the first question and the demo class: the number was never saved, three people each thought someone else would call back, the reply came two days late, or the call ended with 'I will think about it' and no date. A short enquiry form and a register close these gaps. Each enquiry gets a written record, one owner, a dated next step and a clear end: joined, not joined, or not now.

Fields to include in a student enquiry form

Ask only what helps you answer the question and call back. Every extra field makes some parents stop filling the form, and India's data protection law also asks you to collect only what your purpose needs (more on that below). These fields cover almost every coaching centre and tuition class.

Keep a small 'For office use' strip at the bottom, filled by your staff, not the family: enquiry number, date, who took it, source, demo date offered, and status. This strip is what you copy into the enquiry register.

Fields to leave out at the enquiry stage

Some details feel useful but do not belong on an enquiry form. Ask for them later, on the admission form, and only if your rules truly need them.

• Aadhaar number or copies of ID: you are not enrolling anyone yet.
• Date of birth, unless age decides eligibility for the course. If it does, ask 'Has the student passed Class 10?' or 'Age group', not the full date.
• Photos of the student.
• Family income, occupation, caste or religion. The Ministry of Education's guidelines say coaching centres must not discriminate in admission on grounds such as religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or descent, so these have no place in deciding who you call back.
• School marks or report cards. If you want to place a student in the right batch, do it with a short assessment at the demo or counselling stage.
• Email, unless you actually reply by email.
• Home address. Area or locality is enough for now.

Free admission enquiry form format to copy

Copy this format into a Word file, a Google Form or a printed pad. Change the name, phone and courses to yours. Keep it to one side of an A5 or A4 sheet.

1. Header: [Centre name] | Admission Enquiry Form | [Address with landmark] | [Phone / WhatsApp] | [Session, for example 2026-27]
2. Student's name: ______________________
3. Class / exam: ______ Board / medium: ______
4. Subjects or course you are asking about: ______________________
5. Parent's name (if the student is under 18): ______________________
6. Mobile number: ______________ Is this on WhatsApp? Yes / No
7. Area / locality: ______________________
8. Preferred timing: Morning / Evening / Weekend / Online
9. How did you hear about us? Friend or family / Poster or pamphlet / Google / Social media / School nearby / Other: ______
10. Best time to call: Morning / Afternoon / Evening
11. Questions you want us to answer: ______________________
12. Permission: [ ] I am the student (18 or above) or the parent of the student. Please call or message me about this enquiry. (Separate tick) [ ] You may also send me news about new batches and offers on WhatsApp.
13. Signature or name (paper form): ________ Date: ________
14. For office use: Enquiry no. ____ | Taken by ____ | Source ____ | Demo offered on ____ | Status ____

Print the short privacy notice from the next section on the back of the paper form, or as the description at the top of an online form. If a parent enquires by phone, your staff fill the same form while talking, read out the permission line, and tick it only if the parent agrees.

Consent and privacy lines for your enquiry form

India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 covers personal data in digital form, and data collected on paper and typed in later. That includes an enquiry typed into a spreadsheet, a phone's contacts or a WhatsApp chat. What matters most for enquiries:

• Consent must be free, specific, informed, unconditional and unambiguous, and limited to the data needed for the purpose. Ask for what you need, say why, and do not bundle permissions.
• A child under the Act is anyone who has not completed eighteen years. Before you process a child's personal data, you need verifiable consent of the parent or lawful guardian. So for school students, the parent should give the details and the permission.
• The Act allows use of data a person voluntarily gave for a specified purpose, unless they say they do not consent. Its own example is a broker helping someone find a flat: once she says she no longer needs help, he must stop. When a parent says 'we are not interested', stop calling.
• Personal data must be erased once consent is withdrawn or the purpose is no longer being served, unless a law needs you to keep it.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 were published in November 2025. Rule 3 says a notice must be clear, stand on its own, list the personal data and the purpose, and explain how to withdraw consent as easily as it was given, how to use one's rights and how to complain to the Data Protection Board. Rule 3 and most other duties come into force eighteen months after publication, so building the habit in now saves a rush later. For anything beyond a simple form, ask a lawyer who advises on data law.

A short privacy notice you can adapt

'[Centre name] collects the student's name, class, subjects, preferred timing, the parent's name, and a mobile number only to answer this enquiry, offer a demo class and follow up about admission. We do not share these details with anyone else. If you tick the second box, we will also send news of new batches on WhatsApp. You can ask us to stop contacting you or delete your details at any time by calling or messaging [number], or by telling us in person. If the student does not join, we delete the enquiry within [your period, for example 90 days]. Questions: [name, phone].'

Keep the two tick boxes separate. A parent who wants a call back about Class 9 science has not agreed to festival offers every week. The WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy says the same thing in its own words: you may message people only if they have given you their number and opted in to receive messages from you, and it suggests taking separate opt-ins for different kinds of messages and for calls.

What you may and may not promise during an enquiry

The enquiry call or counter visit is where most promises are made. Two sets of official guidelines speak to this directly.

The Ministry of Education sent its Guidelines for Regulation of Coaching Center to states and union territories in January 2024, for them to adopt through their own laws, and several states have since made their own rules (see our guide to coaching centre guidelines). The guidelines say a centre must not make misleading promises or guarantee ranks or good marks to get students to enrol, must tell students about the exam's difficulty, syllabus and effort needed before they enrol, and must make families aware that admission is no guarantee of success. A centre should not enrol a student below sixteen, or should enrol only after the secondary school examination. They define a coaching centre as one that coaches more than fifty students.

The Central Consumer Protection Authority issued its Guidelines for Prevention of Misleading Advertisement in Coaching Sector, 2024 in November 2024. They prohibit false claims about courses, duration, faculty qualifications, fees, refund policies, selection rates, ranks, and guaranteed selections or high scores. They also target false urgency, such as implying limited seats or exaggerated demand to push students into a quick decision.

Write these five lines on a card next to the phone. Front-desk staff follow what is written much more than what was said in a meeting.

Enquiry register format: track every lead in one place

The enquiry form is filled once. The enquiry register is where you work. It can be a ruled notebook, a Google Sheet or the leads list in any software. What matters is one row per enquiry and the same columns every time.

Two columns do most of the work. 'Next step and date' makes sure no enquiry is left without an action. 'Reason (if not joined)' tells you, at the end of the month, whether you are losing families to timing, fees, distance or something else. That is the most useful thing an enquiry register can teach you.

The names in the sample row are placeholders. Keep real student names out of anything you share publicly.

A 7-day follow-up plan with sample messages

Follow up enough to be helpful, and stop when the family says no. Change the days to fit your session, but keep the shape: answer fast, offer one clear next step, and close politely.

Sample messages

Day 0: 'Namaste, this is [your name] from [centre]. Thank you for asking about Class 9 maths and science. We have an evening batch, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6:30 pm. Would you like to attend a free demo class on Wednesday or Thursday at 5 pm?'

Day 1: 'As promised, here are the details for the Class 9 evening batch: timing, monthly fee, and our refund policy (attached). Our address is [address, landmark]. Map: [link]. See you at the demo on Wednesday, 5 pm.'

Day 7: 'Hello, this is [your name] from [centre]. I will not message again about this enquiry. If you would like to join later, just reply here or call [number]. All the best to [student] for the year.'

Our WhatsApp messages for tuition classes page has more ready texts for demos, batches and reminders, and our guide to the demo class explains how to run the class that usually decides the admission.

Calls and SMS: what TRAI's rules mean for you

Calling back a parent who asked you to call is a reply to their enquiry. Bulk promotional calls and SMS are different. TRAI amended its Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations in February 2025. The amendment restricts senders from using normal 10-digit numbers for telemarketing: promotional calls come from the 140 series, and the 1600 series is for transactional and service calls. A sender may not ask again for consent from a customer who has opted out until ninety days have passed, and consent given for an ongoing transaction is valid only for seven days. So do not hand your enquiry list to someone who dials it from ordinary mobile numbers with promotional offers, and do not keep calling families who have said no.

Worked example: reading one month of enquiries

Here is how a register turns into decisions. The numbers below are an example to show the method, not data from any real centre. Say a tuition centre teaching Classes 6 to 10 records 40 enquiries in a month.

Three things stand out. First, 14 of 40 enquiries joined, so about one in three. Second, referrals turn into admissions far more often than pamphlets: 7 of 12, against 2 of 14. Third, more than half of pamphlet enquiries never book a demo, which points to a slow or weak first reply rather than a bad pamphlet.

Now look at the 'Reason' column for the 26 who did not join. Suppose 11 say timing, 6 fees, 5 no reply and 4 chose another centre. Eleven families wanting another time is a strong reason to test a new slot, such as a weekend batch, before spending more on printing. A register makes this a fifteen-minute monthly job.

To bring more families to the enquiry stage, see our guide to getting students for tuition.

Paper, Google Form or software: which to use

Making the form in Google Forms

1. Go to forms.google.com and choose Blank form. Name it '[Centre] Admission Enquiry 2026-27'.
2. Add the fields from the table above: short answer for name and phone, multiple choice for class and timing, checkboxes for subjects. Mark only the needed fields as required.
3. Paste the privacy notice into the form description, and add the two permission questions as separate checkboxes.
4. Open Responses and choose to save responses in a Google Sheet. The responses go into a table in the linked Sheet, which becomes your enquiry register; add the office-use columns to the right.
5. Check sharing. Google notes that form collaborators get access to a new response spreadsheet, and that later changes to the form's permissions do not carry over to the Sheet, so set access on both separately.
6. Make a QR code that opens the form with any QR tool, scan it to test, and print it on your pamphlet and notice board.

Deleting responses inside a form cannot be undone, and the linked Sheet is a separate file in Google Drive, so when you clear old enquiries, delete them in both places.

Common mistakes with enquiry forms, and how to avoid them

• One big tick box for everything. Fix: separate permission for the enquiry follow-up and for offers.
• No owner. Fix: write a name in the 'Owner' column of every row, and review open enquiries at the same time each day.
• No next step. Fix: never end a call without a date, even if it is 'I will call you on Saturday'.
• Calling after a clear no. Fix: mark the row 'Closed' the moment the family says no, and stop.
• Promises at the front desk. Fix: the 'say this, not that' card next to the phone, and a written prospectus with fees and refund policy to hand over.
• Keeping enquiry data forever. Fix: a 'Delete by' date on every row, and a monthly clean-up of closed enquiries from the register, the Sheet, the form and staff phones.
• Not recording the reason. Fix: one word in the 'Reason' column for every family that does not join. It is the cheapest market research you will ever do.

When this format is not for you

This format is built for coaching institutes and tuition centres that take enquiries from families and want to turn them into admissions. It is not the right tool in a few cases:

• Schools and colleges with a formal admission process set by a board, university or the state. Follow their prescribed forms and timelines.
• Courses that need eligibility checks by law, such as age or qualification rules for a regulated course. Your enquiry form may then need one eligibility question, and the official rules come first.
• Large chains running paid ads and call centres. You will need proper consent records, registered sender headers for SMS, and advice from a lawyer on the DPDP Rules and TRAI's regulations.

Doing this on Sikhami

Coaching institutes and tuition centres get a free LMS on Sikhami: video courses with tests and certificates, classroom batches, attendance, fees and receipts. Once an enquiry turns into an admission, you can add the student to a batch, mark attendance and record fees with receipts in one place, all free.

Your institute also gets a free page, and each classroom course gets its own page showing its dates, class days and times, seats and fee, with Apply now. Share that course link in your Day 1 message, so the family sees exactly the batch you discussed. The Help Centre explains how to set up classroom courses, and the Sikhami for institutes page shows everything else your centre can do.