Catholic Education Sandhurst

Head Office Improves Governance across 56 Schools with CompliSpace Education.

About Catholic Education Sandhurst

The Catholic Education Office Sandhurst (CEO Sandhurst) of north central/east Victoria has responsibility for supporting the governance of 56 schools, made up of 42 primary schools, 9 secondary schools, 3 P-12 schools and 3 specialist settings.

The largest school within Catholic Education on Sandhurst has close to 2000 students, whilst the smallest has 19 students and 4 FTE staff. CEO Sandhurst support effective governance of these schools and has responsibilties for ensuring they remain VRQA compliant.

Situation

CEO Sandhurst commenced discussion with CompliSpace as it saw an opportunity to improve how they supported governance, risk management, compliance, policy management as well as staff induction and ongoing staff learning within each Sandhurst school. Above all else CEO Sandhurst’s focus was on the needs of the schools and the staff and students within each school.

From the top down, CEO Sandhurst wanted the ability to deliver custom risk, compliance, policy and training content across the schools in its diocese as well as obtain assurance that each school was effectively managing its risk and compliance obligations on a day-to-day basis.

From the bottom up, schools needed to be empowered to access this content. They also needed to be able to contextualise the content at the individual school level to meet their own unique compliance needs.

It was a balancing act to give those responsible for governance the certainty that each school is doing what it needs to do without over burdening school staff with compliance administration. Critically whilst the schools needed to be compliant they also needed to be able to focus on their core purpose for teaching and caring for students.

CEO Sandhurst also needed help with registering new schools and setting up their risk, compliance, policy management and staff training infrastructure.

Project Vision

CEO Sandhurst established the following vision for the project:

“To work together to simplify risk, compliance and policy management for Sandhurst schools, and help to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all Sandhurst staff and students”.

Response

CompliSpace Education delivered a implementation for Catholic Education on Sandhurst and its 56 schools, following CompliSpace’s “Policy to Culture” framework which is designed to help school leaders manage their key risk and compliance obligation and affect cultural change within their schools.

CompliSpace Education includes:

Policy Management System

A full suite of customisable policies and procedures delivered, managed and maintained through an online system.

Learning Management System

To manage staff training and professional development.

Assurance

To manage risk, tasks, incidents and online forms, as well as provide high quality management reporting outcomes

The 56 schools now have easy access to risk and compliance related content covering:

• School Registration
• Child Protection
• Student Duty of Care
• Occupational Health & Safety
• Human Resources
• Risk Management
• Compliance
• Records Management

Results

• 100% of schools have access to eight policy key risk and compliance. related programs, Assurance tools and a common learning management system.
• 94% of schools have completed meaningful risk ratings and set benchmarks.
• Catholic Education Sandhurst has oversight of every safety incident at every school.
• 1006 safety incidents logged between May 2017 and August 2018.

In addition, Catholic Education Sandhurst has been able to streamline its school registration audit process.

From CompliSpace

Projects such as these require strong leadership from the top and a commitment to effective change management in order to get the buy-in of key stakeholders and maintain a steady momentum. CEO Sandhurst executive and project teams were exceptional in providing this leadership and commitment throughout the project and involving school Principals and administrators every step of the way.

Other factors of success:

Clear Communication on Strategy

CEO Sandhurst provided regular communication and updates to schools via a CompliSpace section in their newsletter to schools. Some schools took this one step further, including a compliance section in their own newsletter for staff.

Project Steering Committee

A project steering committee was established that met regularly to keep the project on track.

Feedback Loop

A online feedback loop was set up so key stakeholders could log their feedback (both positive and negative). This allowed the steering committee and project working team to identify what was working and what wasn’t and then to make appropriate adjustments.

Meeting Face to Face

Throughout the project, face-to-face workshops were held in regional centres bringing together schools in geographical cluster groups. One-on-one meetings were held with schools to deal with specific issues arising.

Technology integration

CompliSpace and CEO Sandhurst worked effectively with schools to integrate the CompliSpace Education technology platforms with their existing technology systems.

In addition to regular meetings with the Office and the per-term support sessions, we also held support sessions for Sandhurst schools, based on geographical clusters.

Testimonials

"CompliSpace were available, adaptable and focused on the needs of our schools. The team was willing to help out and respond to the fluidity of the changing level of expectations. That was excellent. The quality of information they delivered was of a high standard and was received well by schools. Momentum picked up as we went along because the schools could see the impact of the work we were doing together.”

Trish Miller,

Assistant to the Director: Planning, Resources & Governance, CEO Sandhurst. 

"We enjoyed the Risk Assessment Framework. This helps us ensure we are fully compliant coming into our school registration reviews. Thank you."

Jacinta Hicks,

CompliSpace Adminstrator, St Patrick’s Primary School.

"The Assurance system is easy to use and has been embraced quickly within our small school. I now have a quick, clear view of any incidents – past and present – and access the documentation I need. No more digging through filing cabinets or searching digital files. Having the system adopted so well by our staff has meant that I save time finding and sharing information with staff and parents."

Cassie Lynch, 

Principal, St Michael’s Tallangatta.

"It is great not to have to spend time writing compliance related policies and then keeping them up to date. When the law changes the CompliSpace team works with CE Sandhurst to make sure our policies are compliant and related training is up to date. This gives us more time to focus on teaching and caring for the students."

Tony Loorham,

Deputy Principal, St Michael’s Tallangatta.

"CompliSpace Staff are fantastic. They are always very helpful and prompt. They make using the CompliSpace systems easy and fun."

Fiona Byrne,

Risk & Compliance Officer, St Mary’s of the Angels College.

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