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The Educator looks at how Civica is providing principals with a whole-of-school solution to some of their most complex issues

FROM OVERSEEING student enrolments and tracking attendance to keeping parents abreast of their children’s wellbeing and performance, managing a school is no easy feat. For this reason, implementing an efficient, whole-of-school school management system that takes the heavy lifting out of these critical responsibilities should be top of mind for all principals. While there is no shortage of options when it comes to school management systems in the market, the vast majority don’t always tick all the boxes and provide the whole-of-school solution that today’s principals need. ‘A whole-of-school solution’ Iain Finlayson, managing director of libraries and education at Civica – a global cloud software leader serving more than 3,000 schools across the Asia-Pacific – says school leaders are now looking beyond what may be personal preferences of teachers for one system they have become familiar with to what works for the school community as a whole and is sustainable beyond individuals.

Civica is a global leader providing software solutions to improve outcomes for public services. With over 30 years of proven expertise in the education sector, Civica understands the ever-evolving challenges that principals and school managers face – from finance to payroll, to inefficient and time-sensitive administration, Civica can help streamline those processes with practical solutions.

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“School leaders are now looking beyond what may be personal preferences of teachers for one system they have become familiar with to what works for the school community as a whole and is sustainable beyond individuals”

Iain Finlayson, Civica

“Both the Civica Education Suite and Civica Maze offer the option of a whole-school administration and finance system. Our most current solution, the Civica Education Suite, includes modules such as Academic Reporting, Teacher Markbook, Attendance, Billing, Timetabling, and Community Portal,” Finlayson tells The Educator. “The solution was designed to offer a truly next-generation experience for schools management solutions and was built from the ground up based upon the feedback we received over many years in supporting over 3,000 government and independent schools and organisations of all sizes.”

Finlayson says that while both of Civica’s products can offer a whole-school solution, they also support integration with other market products via standards like SIF (the Schools Interoperability Framework). “We also connect with an integration partner, Wonde, who in turn offer options to connect your school's management system to hundreds of other systems,” he says. “We now have over 400 schools using our new Education Solution in Australia who have upgraded from legacy products, and they reflect that make-up, some with full solutions and others where we integrate with partners to deliver solutions that meet the customers’ needs.”

Simplifying student enrolments Recent reports have shown that NSW schools are facing serious challenges around the dual issue of burgeoning student enrolments and worsening staff shortages. Independent modelling indicates that in NSW alone, student enrolments will grow by 20% over the next 15 years. For schools, the process of managing student enrolments can be painstaking, with educators poring over mountains of paperwork. Finlayson says Civica’s Education Suite helps negate this by allowing prospective parents to engage with the school online and submit enquiries and applications digitally. “A large upside for schools is that they can mandate required information to be submitted and also take payments as part of this process,” he explains.

“Once a parent has submitted an online application, admissions staff can easily update and add notes to applications, and move them through a configurable application stage workflow, for example from applicant to waitlist, to interview, to offer, to confirm.” For schools that have multiple intake years, this method of entry allocation is also supported, removing the need for complex spreadsheets and reports, Finlayson says. “To further simplify and streamline the process, once the data has been collected, the school can easily link person records to existing records in the database [for example if the caregivers already have a student in the school], ensuring that duplicate person records are not created.”

“The first thing I think we all should all acknowledge is that the threat of data loss through a cyber incident is very real, and organisations and schools of all sizes are under potential threat”

Iain Finlayson, Civica

Finlayson says the data collected at the enquiry or application stage can also be transferred to create student records, reducing the need for double entry. “This means that admissions staff spend less time entering data, and more time engaging with prospective families.” A strong track record on cybersecurity Education remains a prime target for hackers and one of the least-protected industries against malicious actors. Last July, the Australian education sector saw an increase of 17% in the number of cybersecurity breaches compared to the first half of 2020. Incidents included an attack on the NSW Department of Education, forcing a shutdown of many of its online learning platforms. To help schools address increasingly complex cyberthreats, Civica has been working with market-leading technologies to offer high levels of protection for schools’ networks. “The first thing I think we all should all acknowledge is that the threat of data loss through a cyber incident is very real, and organisations and schools of all sizes are under potential threat,” Finlayson says. “Several years ago, we invested in ISO 27001 certification for the company as a demonstration of our ongoing commitment to information security. We also only use Australian-based data centres that meet strict security requirements.” Finlayson says that while stories of data breaches are common, it’s often revealed that the breach wasn't the result of a clever hacker breaking into a network directly. “Most cybersecurity incidents are the result of a person or people giving information over inadvertently. This is one of the reasons we invested in our people to deliver ongoing training and information to avoid cycles of security incidents and spot attempts to be tricked into giving information away,” Finlayson says. “Every staff member receives at least one annual cybersecurity training review, and we also use other techniques to simulate an attempt to access data so that our team is responding appropriately if a genuine attempt is made.” Finlayson says Civica’s advice to school leaders is to think of cybersecurity as both a people matter to ensure that all staff are clear on how to appropriately handle data in line with Australian Privacy Principles and good practice, and as a technology matter as they take their systems to the cloud. “Who can access it? Where is your data? Who owns the data, and how would you get it back? What happens if the data centre or our system fails?” Finlayson says. “In the case of our solutions, you can be confident that they are maintained to leading industry standards, that data is always in Australia, and that we have redundancy in all of our solutions to maintain the system and data integrity.”

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Civica has over 30 years of experience supporting schools with software and cloud solutions

3,000+ Australian schools rely on a Civica education solution

$35m will be invested in research and development for Civica's education product suite over the next five years

All data centres are based in Australia, and Civica is ISO 27001 certified

Civica at a glance