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Compass Briefs

Schools and Colleges

Principals, administrators, teachers, students, parents, coaches can all benefit from the improved clarity and communication afforded by Compass Business Suite and Compass Alpha Page.

Here's some practical examples:

• Teachers put class assignments and resource materials into CBS straight from their computer or scan printed material, photos, hand-drawn diagrams and charts into the CBS Vault.
• Students can see their assignments for each of their own classes just when they are scheduled [not before they are allowed, not after they are complete].
• Extra-curricula activities can easily be added and the information maintained up-to-date at any time.
• Other information can be easily captured into CBS. For instance, when students are late, off sick, on campus, off campus, on excursion, on detention, etc. Or when students or staff [including casual and part-time staff] are allocated to a class or room or rostered on for supervision, sport, training, etc.
• Parents can see what homework / projects / excursions / music performances / sport training / debating / etc. each of their children has to do.
• Administrators can see what is being set by teaching staff, and deal with any issues that parents raise.
• Potential parents [and students] can get information directly related to their application. In addition, they can be given live examples of the quality and timeliness of communication they will receive when they are part of the school community.
• This also applies to old girls / boys, donors, nearby residents / businesses and other members of the school community.
• School administrators can use CBS to communicate directly to individual staff members, teams, groups, sets or to any combination of staff, parents, committee members, students, and other members of the school community. Everything can be timed appropriately to show when needed and disappear when no longer relevant. The information can be kept on-line so it is re-usable next week, month, term, year, etc.
• Alumni of students and staff can be held closely to the school using this excellent communications facility.

What's involved?

• Student progress reports always take a lot of time to prepare, distribute, then discuss with the students and their parents.
• Teachers usually limit the specifics of their feedback to limit the time required.
• Parents often feel they would like more information but do not want to overly burden with constant requests for interaction.
• Information capture, retrieval, summarisation and communication mechanisms in CBS help to make the whole process more efficient and much more effective.

How does it work?

• CBS Performance Management system helps all parties trap pertinent information, events, issues, complaints and successes for proper consideration and review, counselling and development, without having to increase the number of meetings or correspondence.
• In addition, the quality of staff reviews is considerably enhanced by better management of the process and by on-line access by all parties to the details captured during the whole period, rather than just before the review takes place.
• This supports career planning, succession planning and professional and personal development.
• It applies equally to administration staff as to teaching staff, to casual and part-time as to contract and permanent, to volunteer as to paid team members.

Here are some of the key elements CBS supports:

• strategy development.
• planning.
• vision sharing.
• committee work and policy management.
• organisation structure.
• position descriptions and responsibilities.
• temporary organisation units and positions such as committees, taskforces, projects.
• succession planning.
• process re-engineering.
• project work and tasklists.
• communication and co-ordination.

All the data is fully integrated so there's no need to re-enter data twice or maintain multiple sets of information. For example, contact details, tagging of people and organisations can be done easily, so everyone who has clearance can access records and see the details without having to rely on others to retrieve data for them. The reporting features of CBS means that there is no longer the need to incur the cost of interrupting other people's work, getting them to summarise information and produce reports. Having it all on-line, over the web, 24x7, at the fingertips is a real bonus.

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