Fifteen years ago, school management software Compass was born from a simple yet powerful idea: there must be a better way.
In 2010, as schools grappled with mounting challenges—from policy reforms demanding greater transparency in reporting student achievement and school performance, to shifting societal expectations, rising administrative burdens, and the onset of the digital age—John de la Motte and Lucas Filer saw an opportunity to do things differently. They envisioned a smarter, more efficient way to support schools through innovative technology.
That vision became Compass 1.0, developed to address two pressing needs: improving parent engagement and streamlining school administration.
Fifteen years later, Compass has evolved into a comprehensive, fully integrated school management system, trusted by over 3,000 schools and more than three million educators, students, and parents worldwide.
From the beginning, co-founders Mr de la Motte and Mr Filer built Compass in collaboration with schools that shared their vision.
“Our foundational schools played an essential role in shaping the platform, ensuring that every feature we introduced met the real needs of educators and administrators,” Mr de la Motte says.
“Their trust, feedback, and partnership helped transform Compass from an ambitious project into a robust ecosystem supporting schools at every level.”
As schools’ needs have evolved, Mr Filer says, so has Compass.
“With every new challenge, we expanded the platform to include new solutions for student administration, school operations, community engagement, student finance, and more,” Mr Filer says.
“One of the things we do well as a business is we not only understand the functionality that schools need in the software, we also invest the time to understand why they need it. Having this deeper understanding brings a corresponding increase in quality and ensures what we’re building is fit-for-purpose.”
Compass has quickly become an essential part of many school communities, helping to streamline processes and foster deeper connections between schools and families.
Today, it is more than a software provider – it is a trusted partner to more than 3,000 schools and three million users.
The co-founders reflect on one of the first schools they onboarded, and the challenges they had to overcome.
“It had one of the most complex timetables we’ve come across, where different bell times operated for different year levels, which made tracking attendance challenging,” Mr de la Motte recalls.
At the time, similar products in the market took a rigid, period-oriented view of timetabling. The two entrepreneurs shared a different vision: they proposed implementing a more flexible, time-based scheduling framework.
“The school placed an immense trust in us. There was this understanding that we will stop at nothing to make sure this works.”
The challenge the school’s timetable presented proved fortunate in hindsight.
“As hard as it was in that first instance, we managed to build a platform that could accommodate complex, multi-layered timetables – and this functionality could then flow across to other schools,” Mr de la Motte says.
He describes timetabling and tracking attendance as a key part of the platform’s structure. “If you can get the schedule right, if you can know where a kid is, at what time, the rest can be bolted on.”
Mr Filer agrees: “We got the architecture right. We understood early on that there were different layers of activities that were interconnected. We were lucky enough to observe some schools that gave us those complicated examples up front.
“I remember going to schools and showing them our schedule, which is presented like Google calendar – something people take for granted these days as the logical way to plan. But when we initially did it, schools would say ‘we run on period times, not hours and minutes’. We would of course highlight that there are other activities, like excursions and events and meetings and sickbay visits that sit around their normal period structure that teachers are going to want to schedule in as well. We’re glad that we made the decision early on to take that more flexible, layered approach. Now schools can schedule any event with any people in any place, at any time, over any group of people they choose.”
Looking ahead
As Compass celebrates its achievements over the past 15 years, the co-founders say they will continue to innovate, expand, and support schools with cutting-edge solutions that anticipate the needs of tomorrow.
But what are those needs?
For Mr de la Motte, community expectations are driving the conversation.
“Schools are often at the centre of the community; obligations around compliance and privacy are massive,” he says. “And then couple that with security.”
“How do we make sure we’re investing in platform stability, security, scalability and accessibility? I think that’s key in terms of what are the things that we’re going to see over the next few years stand out.”
While the team at Compass have never had an issue coming up with fresh ideas – Mr de la Motte cites their multi-year roadmap of new functionality – security nonetheless remains “front and centre”.
“How do we continue to innovate without compromising compliance or security? Artificial intelligence is another challenge. The reality is roles are going to change. There’s going to be a much greater ability to embrace and modify some of these legacy tasks. So I think we’ll have a really interesting role to play. We’ve got the ability to access this data to make it more accessible to schools. How do we help them to go on their AI journey?” he asks.
Mr Filer agrees, noting that a key challenge faced by companies incorporating AI into their products, is that of expectations management.
“When we work one-on-one with a person, we have an expectation of reasonable care and quality, but not one of absolute perfection. We’re happy for some degree of human error. When we talk about computers being in the mix, our tolerance is basically zero. We expect the computer to produce a perfect outcome every time,” he says.
“I think part of the challenge will be managing people’s expectations and adapting to a world where we’re comfortable having computers make what are likely to be, in many cases, much better decisions than humans in similar situations.”
As cloud-based technology continues to transform education management, Compass remains at the forefront—empowering schools with greater efficiency and leading the way in innovation.
Want more information?
Chat to the Compass team on stand #1210 at EDUtech 2025, or visit www.compass.education
