St Augustine's College

St Augustine’s College is situated on the North Shore of Sydney and provides independent education for boys in years five through twelve. The college is well known for its extracurricular offerings across its array of sports and co-curricular activities. St Augustine's has provided great student activities since October of 2021 through Clipboard, an extracurricular management system (EMS).

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This case study delves into how Clipboard was able to streamline St Augustine’s processes across their sport and co-curricular activities from the perspectives of Jonathan Harvey, the Assistant Principal of Sport and Co-Curricular, and Kristen Butcher, Co-Curricular Admin. As a leading Extracurricular Management System, Clipboard was able to help the school reduce double handling and create a single source of truth for all of its extracurricular information.

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Centralising data in one place

With 1600 students, many moving parts and people are involved in planning, organising, and operating the Co-Curricular programs at St Augustine’s. Having Clipboard as a central management system, St Augustine’s has been able to see everything going on outside of the classroom in one location - creating and publishing teams, recording student attendance and advertising match results to the student and parent community. Having this breadth of functionality and visibility has enabled school admin staff to view a student’s entire extracurricular participation data with an ease previously unknown.

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Coming from paper-based methods and manual roll-marking through Operoo, Clipboard has offered St Augustine’s the unique ability to see where all their students are at any time.  Jonathan Harvey, Assistant Principal - Sport and Co-Curricular, emphasised how  Clipboard has helped him and his team to more effectively manage absences and hold students and their parents accountable for attending sessions.

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“In my position, Clipboard allows me to work with our Heads of Houses and Heads of Form to have a real snapshot of boys' attendance. Make sure that we're holding the boys and parents accountable to their sons, coming and participating in their sports at training, on the weekends, in ensembles, or in drama and rehearsals.”

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Kristen Butcher, Co-Curricular Admin, added that Clipboard has been useful in ways that weren’t imagined initially, such as having a reliable record for extracurricular attendance that can be used when nominating and awarding student leadership positions. This is also advantageous in awarding sportsmanship awards within the college. Due to Clipboard’s robust reporting capabilities, St Augustine’s was able to improve reporting and decision-making within its community.

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Improving Efficiency and Reducing Double Handling

Many schools have seen a drastic increase in efficiency once they have implemented Clipboard as part of their tech stack, and St Augustine’s is no different! Using Clipboard’s location management and push notification features, the admin team have been able to easily communicate with all stakeholders about fixtures and schedules while providing changes and updates in real-time, straight to the mobile devices of coaches, students and parents.

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Kristen Butcher, Co-Curricular Admin, discusses the parent communication improvements since the implementation of Clipboard:

 “There's a lot less emails from parents asking, Where's my kid playing? Where's that field? Because you can use the map system for fixtures and training. We can put notes in there about buses, and the push notifications that come automatically from the app have been incredible in helping us manage all of our different sports and Co-Curricular activities.”

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Clipboard has enabled St Augustine’s to deliver consistent and timely information to over 3,000+ parents in real-time, allowing them to focus more on providing quality activities for their 1600 students and move away from investing excessive resources into administrative processes. With Clipboard’s EMS, St Augustine’s has been able to deliver mass email communications to parents at the click of a button and reduce back-and-forth conversations about the scheduling, teams and session management with multiple parents.

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API and Integrations

St Augustine’s uses Clipboard’s Open API to power custom integrations, significantly reducing double handling and allowing them to share information across their systems internally, improving data integrity, timeliness of information, and accuracy. Clipboard serves as the repository for their sports fixtures and results, and this information is pushed to a custom widget on their website, developed by our integration partner, Digistorm, allowing parents and students to see their team’s performance anywhere, anytime. 

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Jonathan reflects on previous manual methods:

 “Previously, we'd have to manually enter data on a few different platforms to make sure that everyone received it. Now, it's one central system that pushes out push notifications or through the website, and everyone can see it immediately. So Clipboard certainly takes away that double handling, with fixturing and results, which has been a godsend.”

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Kristen also emphasised the improvements to efficiency Clipboard has been able to provide through our reporting functions and features. Using the export tool, St Augustine’s has been able to pull the data straight from the app to use in their other systems, further reducing the impacts of double handling and allowing for more streamlined processes and activities within the school. 

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Implementation and Product Feature Support

Johnathan celebrated the quick and comprehensive support he received as a Clipboard customer throughout his time implementing and using Clipboard at St Augustine’s.

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“As we continue to grow and change, Clipboard moves with the needs of the users. This has been really helpful and given us an advantage and a comfort of using the system.” 

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St Augustine’s have been inquisitive to learn more about the product. Clipboard’s support team has been supportive in answering queries and suggesting best practices for the school's distinctive set-up.

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“Clipboard is your one stop shop for full support and co-curricular management. If you like consistency, overall visibility, accountability, and stronger records, Clipboard achieves this and is whilst being user and client friendly.” Kristen Butcher, Co-Curricular Admin

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Improving the Staff, Student and Parent Experience 

St Augustine’s has consistently received excellent feedback from parents in feedback surveys about the direct and timely communication delivered to them due to Clipboard’s email and push notification features. This has enabled parents to have a more consistent experience across the schools' differing sports and co-curricular activities. It has simplified the student's knowledge and expectations of when and how to access information for their activities. 

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“Clipboard allows us to be streamlined across all users. Even the experience for the parents who don't see the back end, find it simple to navigate, and that's been a real advantage.” Jonathan Harvey, Assistant Principal of Sport and Co-Curricular

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Kristen, also noted that with Clipboard’s roll marking feature and attendance integration with their student information system, staff and managers have held parents to a higher level of accountability while also seeing where and when students are engaging across their extracurricular program. 

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“We are seeing a high level of attendance across the board, meaning students are engaged in their activities. So they're selecting more carefully, attending and starting to enjoy their activity.”

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Increasing Child Safety

Clipboard’s attendance tracking has improved the duty of care processes by having readily accessible records to help find and analyse student attendance patterns. This has led to swiftly resolving cases where children may be intentionally missing school or being found to have arrived late to sessions. Student safety is at the core of operating quality extracurricular activities, and being able to see and communicate student attendance quickly and decisively allows St Augustine’s to provide great activities and promote a positive student experience.

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“We have been able to help solve a lot of safety issues and problems just purely from having visibility of where the kids are and Clipboard’s role-taking ability”. Kristen Butcher, Co-Curricular Admin

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To conclude, St Augustine’s is an excellent example of how using Clipboard to manage your school’s extracurricular activities can benefit beyond timesaving and efficiency improvements by enhancing the staff, student and parent experience, allowing you to focus more on developing great extracurricular programs, not spreadsheets.

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So, why wait? Connect with us to unlock the full potential of your school.

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