1. Using online facilities to improve customer service & communication An Australia Street Infants School Experience Bernard Cheng Australia Street Infants School

2. Schools traditionally are… Schools are very good at considering and delivering continual improvement to: Teacher Quality Student outcomes and achievement Building positive and productive relationships with parents However until recently …. Rarely have we considered how our school offices operate and how the administrative services they provide could be more effectively delivered

3. Why provide online functionality to parents? In regard to the school office we understand and acknowledge that … School Administration Managers are required to simultaneously manage multiple tasks accurately and efficiently in a busy and unpredictable environment that include: - School finance activities -The phone - Walk in traffic (Parents and Prospective Parents) - Teachers and students

4. Why provide online functionality to parents? However have we considered that … The average continuous time a SAM spends on a task in a day is approximately 15 minutes. Most financial tasks undertaken have on average 4 interruptions prior to being completed from disparate sources. Continued Interruptions lead to inefficient workflows with high unnecessary error rates.

5. Why provide online functionality to parents? In regard to parents they are … Increasingly time poor Finding it difficult to interact with schools during operational hours due to increasing work commitments wanting to be able to interact dynamically with their school online much the same was as we expect to be able to do so with institutions that we need to access after our school day! Our administrative systems generally have not addressed these as issues for consideration and operate on the premise that: Parents are required to come into the school office to complete administrative tasks or if they can’t, expect students to be able to interact in their behalf either directly or via a teacher.

6. Why provide online functionality to parents? These are critical issues for to be solved in a school office context.

7. Why provide online functionality to parents? Schools need to respond to: Parent difficulties in accessing the office during school hours Whilst introducing: Administrative systems that introduce work flow efficiencies. That is to: Increase productive on-task time for the SAM through common task automation whilst reducing the need for parental face to face contact in the school office.

8. What is the solution? Web delivery of administrative and e-commerce functions to parents via functional websites.

9. Web delivery of administrative functions Web delivery of administrative functions is an opportunity to provide a dynamic and scalable solution that can be developed to meet these conflicting needs… Through the development of: An online information and financial management system built on a self service client based information ownership model. This allows users to freely interact and maintain their own information via self registration and secure log in.

10. Online services and information ownership This model effectively manages: Double handling of information and tasks Input data error Information loss Most importantly: Relieves the SAM of common tasks that can be automated and consolidated for management at more opportune times freeing up time for other more complex concentration intensive tasks.

11. Online services and information ownership SQL Web Server User Interface Data creation, access & self management Data access & user management Office Interface Creation Access User Data

12. Australia Street Infants School What we have done at Australia Street Infants School

13. School Context School Size PP5 School Programs Lennox House – Schools as Communities Centre (400 registered families) Pre-School (20 Enrolments) K- 2 Infants School (110 Enrolments) SASS Allocation 1 x SAM 1 x 0.4 SAO (2 days per week)

14. School Population Demographic Inner city families with one or more parents working in a combination of full and part time capacities. Average of 2 children per family. 50% of children in Pre-School to Year 2 attend before and after school care 5 days per week with another 30% of children picked up and dropped of to schools by other families by arrangement. Parents indicate that they are time poor with considerable work and financial commitments making visiting the school office to settle accounts or hand in notes very difficult.

15. School Office Issues High loss rate of notes going home and school activity fees being payed chronically late due to parents not being able to get to school. Limited SASS assistance for the School Administration Manager. Consistent interruptions from parents, teachers and students throughout the day prohibiting concentration intensive tasks from being successfully completed during school hours. Maintenance of an effective communication strategy with families attending our community programs whilst maintaining an effective relationship with our waiting list.

16. School Office Issues Most importantly though … Reduce the stress levels of the School Administration Manager

17. Another interesting issue to consider… The phone will always ring and Parents work during school hours

18. The development of our e-commerce services Phase 1 – March 2008 Developed a scope and plan for a website that would be able to provide Secure e-commerce functionality to parents 24 hours / 7 days per week. This required an understanding of key stakeholders that would interact with our website and their particular needs:

19. Website stakeholders and functional use School Office New Families Current Families Provision of financial services to parents 24/7 Increased access to school office functions whilst reducing face to face and phone contact as primary means of interaction Automation of information gathering, manipulation and storage School policy access management (downloads) Email as a strategy for developing effective relationships with our enrolment waiting lists and registration lists School promotion Provisional enrolment management (User managed) Program registrations (User managed) School information access and interaction School shop News & current events Student learning support and image galleries E-forms for parent RSVP / Notifications

20. Key functionalities that were identified Capacity to: - Submit provisional enrolments and registrations online - Pay school activity fees and Pre-School fees - Purchase School Uniforms online - Access school policy information and news on demand - Electronic return of notes to school - Maintain effective communication with families that attend school programs on a casual basis -Maintain an effective relationship with our waiting lists -Functional Scalability All functionality to be remote managed and monitored via a Blackberry / PDA

21. Our main page … All services immediately accessible.

22. Screen Shots:: School News Blog

23. Screen Shots:: School Calendar

24. Screen Shots :: Online Shop

25. Screen Shots :: Online Enrolments / Registrations

26. Screen Shots :: Self service User log in

27. Screen Shots :: Absence e-form

28. Screen Shots :: Parent workshop e-form

29. Screen Shots :: School download page

30. The development of our e-commerce services Phase 2 – April 2008 Website launch, training and encouragement of parents to interact with the school online Phase 3 – May 2008 onwards Gradual increase of uploading school information online with a gradual cessation of providing printed information. Phase 4 – Where we are now! Continued solicited user input for refinements and enhancements of the service which has included the development of a school age calculator and local area determiner for parents to access

31. Screen Shots :: School Age Calculator

32. Screen Shots :: Local Area Determiner

33. Overall Success … Some statistics as at 22/9/2008 51, 899 hits per month (388,188 to date). 1046 actual visits to the school website per month. All families in the school visit the website 5.7 times per month. Average time spent on our site is 10 minutes with 4 page views 60% of the school has completed an online payment via the school website purchasing uniforms and paying school fees. In 6 months $28,831.00 worth of online transactions have been processed.

34. Overall Success … Some statistics Lennox House Community Program registration Web server: 400 registrations at a rate of 5 – 10 per week. 25% of the database log in and interact with their information in a month including parents un-registering their record from the server when required. Bulk emails sent on a monthly basis to 400+ families. 100% of families registered to attend our program online.

35. Overall Success … Some statistics School provisional Enrolment Web Server: 150 Provisional Enrolment records held for Pre-School. 120 Provisional Enrolment records held for Kindergarten. 100% of provisional enrolments submitted online for 2009. Quarterly enrolment news emailed to 270 families including weekly updates during the period in which offers were made. Offers for placement in the school was done solely by email.

36. School download database Interesting fact: During the period that student enrolment offers were made, 97 families downloaded a school enrolment policy!

37. Overall Success … Some statistics Parent Comment on their experience of being part of our online approach to enrolments … “Whilst we were not successful in gaining a place in Pre-School, we appreciated all of the email communications providing regular updates on the enrolment process. This enabled us to understand the decisions that were made taking the mystery out of the whole process”

38. Subsequent impact on the school office 90% reduction in walk in traffic. 80% reduction in phone calls. 80% increase in Parent return of notes and timeliness of payments. An estimated 2 hours per day / 10 hours per week of productive time has been gained that would be otherwise spent dealing with parent requests. As a relative costing this represents a saving of $240.00 per week or $9400.00 per year in productive time.

39. Subsequent impact on the school office This has led to one huge change …. SASS Staff, teachers and the principal have more time to socially interact with parents to discuss students and broader educational issues!

40. Subsequent impact on the school office 90% of interactions of the school website happens between 7pm & 11pm. 45% of families have logged in to modify their submitted information over 12 months on our enrolment database. 100% accuracy of information has been achieved through the provisional enrolment service. Recurring monthly financial tasks take 50% less time and with significantly less errors being reported.

41. Future directions Ideally if the opportunity exists we would like to: Link our online enrolment database to ERN to populate pre-enrolments that would otherwise need to be manually entered. Link our school shop to our school financial system (Oasis or ??). Provide further user enhancements as identified needs arise.

42. Key considerations Your school website is the most effective tool for interacting with your school population in a focussed, flexible and cost effective way. Parent uptake is largely determined by how relevant the services you provide are to the demographics of your community. Online service provisions allow parents to interact with the school at a time that is convenient leading to increased efficiencies in the office during the day and more focussed service provision to parents. Importantly an easy to use, well laid out site is exponentially more effective that a flashy site with links buried in a complicated structure.

43. Visit our website … You can visit our website at: www.australiastreetschool.com or www.australist-p.schools.nsw.edu.au A more complete version of this presentation can be downloaded from our website at: www.australiastreetschool.com/downloads …. Follow the links to school publications