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St Kilda Park Primary School
The challenge
St Kilda Park Primary School has been at the heart of one of Melbourne’s most densely populated suburbs since 1882, maintaining a strong community ethos, a proud sense of independence, and a tightly held set of values. Until early 2017, the school had been using multiple systems for its processes, some of which had grown outdated. It was clear there was a need for a single school management system connecting the various elements of this tightly knit school community.
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“Compass is absolutely central to how our school operates, it’s hard to remember what things were like before it. For example, how did we do excursions before Compass? With great difficulty.” Neil Scott, Principal
Choosing Compass
Principal Neil Scott was already familiar with Compass after working as an assistant principal in a nearby school. When he moved to St Kilda Park, Compass had already been chosen as the school management system on the basis of positive feedback, and Neil was made responsible for implementing it. The appeal of Compass was its ability to replace multiple existing systems and processes with one integrated platform. While attendance was the starting point, the versatility and breadth of the ecosystem meant staff could choose from a diverse range of modules to discover what worked best for the needs of the school community.
Results
Neil credits Compass with being so transformative that it would be difficult to imagine the school community running without it. For example, while looking for parent information once required shuffling through records, Neil can now find everything he needs with a few clicks. The same applies for organising school excursions, which previously required huge amounts of preparation - Compass centralises the entire process, reducing significant amounts of work and stress.
Purchase order submissions, wellbeing management, consent and payment for events, and reporting are now all completed through Compass, saving what Neil estimates is ‘tens of hours’ of work a week. While Neil notes that on occasion it has been necessary to provide Compass with feedback about features, these recommendations have always been taken on board, with improvements to functionality being made where necessary.
