Civica Press Release

Department for Education South Australia to transform learning and care outcomes across 900 schools with Civica Education Suite

• The Department chooses Civica’s next-gen digital schools management solution to help raise education standards across all government schools and preschools in South Australia.
  
  
• World class education management system will streamline administrative tasks, improve connection with parents and caregivers, and help schools and preschools focus on teaching and learning.
  
  

Adelaide, September 21, 2018: Civica, one of Australia’s leading suppliers of critical software applications, digital solutions and managed services that help transform the way organisations work, is pleased to announce that the Department for Education South Australia (‘The Department’) will implement the Civica Education Suite (CES) across its jurisdiction. 

The market leading SaaS solution will eventually be rolled out to over 900 sites including pre-schools, primary schools, high schools and various other educational institutions to deliver against the Department’s key outcomes which include:

• Improved learning and care
• Improved analytics and reporting
• Improved tools to support management of sites
• Consistency in systems across sites to improve reliability, support, resourcing and training.

Scott Bayliss, Chief Information Officer for The Department said: “We are pleased to partner with Civica to develop a platform that will modernise and transform school and preschool operations. “The Education Management System will be a powerful digital tool with a comprehensive suite of features to streamline school management tasks and support our teachers to provide individualised learning and track and report on each student’s progress.

“It will help us to improve student outcomes and reduce the administrative burden placed on teachers and early childhood workers.

“Importantly parents and caregivers will have access to a dedicated and secure parent portal that they can log on to at any time and from any device to see information relevant to their child.

“It will be an important enabler for school improvement and support our aspiration to become a world-class education system that ensures learning management is a priority.”

A key factor in The Department’s decision to implement the Civica solution was its design which aims to support teaching and learning, save educators’ time spent on admin tasks, improves data integrity and transparency, and streamlines information for users to work collaboratively. The system will service a community of around 185,000 students and 30,000 teachers and schools administrators, and have a fundamental impact on the future educational landscape in South Australia. 

Simon Jones, Managing Director for Libraries & Education at Civica welcomed the partnership with The Department. He said: “We look forward to our journey with The Department where we can make a positive difference to students’ lives. CES is a powerful schools management solution that can improve the education outcomes of students and families across South Australia.” 

He added: “Almost every day we are reminded about the increase in teachers’ workload through greater administrative requirements, giving them less time to focus on teaching. Civica has 40 years of experience in the Australian education sector, and we developed CES based on customer feedback that demanded that the focus shift back to learning by streamlining administrative tasks.”

ABOUT THE CIVICA EDUCATION SUITE 

The Civica Education Suite is Civica’s newly developed, completely cloud-hosted and 100% web-based school management solution for Australian schools. 

Designed to focus on personalised learning
As a “person-centric” system, CES captures student progress right throughout their education journey, saving teachers’ time on understanding specific education needs, and being better equipped to personalising their approach to student learning. 
The suite includes school administration, finance, teaching and learning tools, timetabling, library management, parent engagement tools including a community portal. 

Creating exciting and collaborative learning experiences for students
With strategic partner, Frog Education, the Civica solution provides a world class learning management system that is fully integrated into CES. This system will equip South Australian teachers with powerful tools in course management and curriculum tracking, all focused on delivering improved learning outcomes. Designed to enable schools to fully embrace Gonski 2.0 report recommendations for personalised learning, the Frog solution will empower teachers to create engaging and collaborative digital learning experiences that focus on the growth of each and every student.

Reducing paperwork, increasing engagement
Civica Education Suite (CES) combines information management and powerful teaching tools on an innovative single platform to drive school improvement and efficiency
Additionally, the CES solution integrates with EdSmart, a third party solution that digitises school forms, slips and other communication to reduce paperwork and increase parent response rates. CES also offers a parent portal, which parents and legal guardians can access anytime and from any device, offering them a snapshot of their child’s progress. This ensures that they are more involved in the student’s progress and no longer have to depend on parent-teacher meetings to discuss progress.

Business intelligence for fast data driven decisions
The Department of Education SA and individual schools will also benefit from CES business intelligence which is based on the Yellowfin Business Intelligence suite. This will play an important role in assisting The Department when it comes to performance measurement and comparison. Education officers and school principals can run reports to compare parameters such as learning outcomes across classes, standards, demographics as well as schools.

ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT FOR EDUCATION 

The Department for Education brings together high-quality education, early childhood and child health services that support children and young people from the day they are born, in all South Australian communities. A strong and vibrant public education system delivers benefits to all South Australians. Our key stakeholders are:

• more than 190,000 children and young people who attend some 900 public schools and early childhood services
• their parents and caregivers
• the approximately 20,000 babies born in South Australia each year and children up to 4 years old who access the Women’s and Children’s Health Network
• close to 30,000 staff including teachers, school-based staff, early childhood educators and staff in corporate support roles.
  
  

ABOUT THE CIVICA GROUP

Civica (www.civica.com) is a market-leading specialist in business critical software applications, digital solutions and managed services that help teams and organisations around the world to transform the way they work. Combining exceptional customer focus, experience and commitment, Civica supplies more than 3,000 major organisations in 10 countries around the world.