About St Dominic’s College
St Dominic’s College is an independent boys’ school located in Kingswood, Western Sydney. With a rich history dating back to the 1950s, it is a thriving community dedicated to fostering the growth and development of young minds.
St Dominic’s College is an accepting and welcoming community that fosters nurturing relationships and is committed to the well-being and welfare of our students and the wider College community. As a Catholic Community, all members can learn and celebrate in their faith. St Dominic’s College has been providing excellence in education and its thriving sports program for over sixty years.
Our main priorities
- Standardised incident management reporting
- Improving incident communications and announcements
- Streamlining college communications
- College letterheads and templates
- Enhancing communication with parents via the Compass app
How we selected our software partner
We selected Compass because it was user-friendly and easy to get staff on board. We also found that the behind-the-scenes building and customisation were simple. Our favourite module of Compass is Chronicle.
Our implementation process
Initially, our biggest concern was improving and streamlining communication with parents. We previously worried about parents being overwhelmed by too many emails. However, we are using Chronicle to customise email and dashboard notifications for individual students, which has been beneficial in improving communication with parents. The implementation and transition to Compass have gone very smoothly. Staff feel empowered by the ease of communication with parents.
Parents feel better informed when they arrive at teacher interviews and are aware of their child’s performance in each subject. The live feedback has been very beneficial to parents, as it helps them know where their child is.
Students can actively track their progress through Compass, giving them real-time visibility into their academic achievement, merits, and house points earned. This motivates them to stay engaged and encourages a sense of ownership over their accomplishments and behaviour.
For administrators, Compass provides a clear and accessible overview of student activity via Chronicle entries. This allows them to track student information and respond proactively to contribute to a more cohesive and supportive school environment.
Compass offers a better connection to our school community.
Here are some of the core aspects we appreciated about Compass.
- Chronicle allows teachers to write observations of behaviour and on class work.
- Customisable templates
- Enhances communication with parents without creating more work
- Coaches can help athletes and monitor their schoolwork
- Pulse helps track attendance, performance, and house points, and it easily generates reports
“In our first year, we eliminated the need for student planners – saving around $25,000 by shifting to Compass’s built-in tools like “My Tasks” for student planning”.
Expectations and initial impressions of Compass
Compass will help us streamline workflows and significantly reduce costs, supporting our school’s long-term goals.
One of our favourite modules so far is the wellbeing module, Chronicale. Chronicle has improved tracking student behaviour and identifying areas for improvement. Its user-friendly templates allow staff to complete forms easily by ticking boxes, and the automation of certain forms streamlines internal administration.
By using Compass, we have reduced our reliance on multiple external platforms, such as our school management applications, Consent2Go, and My Maintenance. Compass enables us to manage everything in one place, aligning with our vision of creating a better communication, cost-effective and streamlined way of operating in the school environment.
