Reducing the number of school management software packages in use – without sacrificing functionality – is a common challenge for schools, but one college has found a solution.
1987 was a significant year for technology: Microsoft Windows 2.0 was released, IBM launched its first laptop, and Adobe Illustrator 1.0 was introduced. It was also the year that Overnewton Anglican Community College, a private co-educational school in Melbourne, Victoria was founded.
Today, the Prep to Year 12 College has 2,000 students across two campuses: the Canowindra Campus located in Taylors Lakes and the Yirramboi Campus located in Keilor. It also has a suite of technology and software its founders in 1987 wouldn’t recognise. In 2023, the College was operating multiple school management software systems without centralised integration – and it was causing headaches.
“We lacked a unified learning management platform,” a spokesperson for the College said.
“This led to a fragmented experience for both staff, who managed various applications for daily operations, and parents, who navigated multiple portals to access student information,” they said.
Recognising the need for an integrated solution, the College first established a clear vision and set of priorities for a cohesive school management and learning management system.
“Our aim was to find a partner aligned with our long-term goals—one who offered an intuitive, innovative, and collaborative platform,” the spokesperson said.
It found a partner in Compass. Established in 2010, Compass is the school management system of choice for more than 3,000 Australian K-12 schools and three million users across the independent, Catholic and government school sectors.
A recognised leader in education technology, Compass is the only school management system provider in Australia to be independently reviewed and recognised in the Cloud Awards, celebrating innovation in cloud-based solutions as a service.
Compass was a finalist in three categories in the 2024/25 Cloud Awards, including Best in Mobile Cloud Solutions, Cloud Innovator of the Year, and Cloud Development Innovation of the Year. It was also shortlisted in a fourth category: Best Software-as-a-Service Outside the USA.
This year the company is also celebrating 15 years of supporting schools like Overnewton Anglican Community College with innovative technology solutions.
In the case of Overnewton, Compass said the College had clear, key objectives of what it wanted to achieve in consolidating software, including streamlining workflows across systems for teaching, learning, assessment, and reporting. It also wanted to leverage data-driven insights to enhance performance and efficiency.
The College said implementing Compass enabled it to consolidate six separate applications previously used for school management into one cohesive platform.
“This transition streamlined practices and processes, significantly reducing the administrative workload for teachers and staff while enhancing operational efficiency,” the College spokesperson said.
“We’ve had the benefit of Compass sitting on top of our current SIS, which took the stress out of having to do a hard cut over when we went live with Compass. The next phase is to look at further consolidation of legacy systems.”
Disparate systems also create significant operational inefficiencies. Australian schools face demanding reporting requirements to bodies like the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). Disconnected systems force school staff to manually reconcile data across various platforms, leading to errors and delays. An integrated school management system, by contrast, can automate these processes, allowing schools to meet reporting requirements efficiently and accurately.
For schools ready to transition from a fragmented school management system to an integrated, secure platform, visit www.compass.education or email discover@compass.education.
