In an education landscape where data can either overwhelm or empower, Brigidine College St Ives is well on the way to turning information overload into actionable insights. By unifying its systems, the school is making a measurable difference in student wellbeing, academic outcomes, and staff decision-making.
Background
Brigidine is a non-selective Catholic independent school in Sydney’s north, educating about 800 girls from Years 7 to 12.
Since opening its doors in 1954, the school has consistently ranked among the top 100 schools in NSW and is known for its strong academic results, commitment to social justice, and focus on nurturing the whole student.
Challenges
By 2017, the school’s digital landscape was fragmented. Critical information about students was scattered across platforms, making it hard for staff to respond quickly or see the full picture.
Deputy Principal Teaching and Learning, Leone Smyth, says: “Too much information was being recorded in different places or shared informally, which made it hard to track students’ progress or provide timely support."
This challenge mirrors what many schools experience: siloed data that hinders both academic and wellbeing initiatives.
“We needed a single source of truth,” she says. “Bringing everything into one system was about improving clarity, support and consistency for staff, students, and families alike.”
The finance team faced similar obstacles.
Finance Officer Nicole McLeod recalls: “The old setup couldn’t support both the teaching and finance sides; it just wasn’t keeping up. We were after one system for the whole school,” she says.
As well, manual processes slowed down payment schedules, limited options for parents, and made it difficult to track changes or add notes to student accounts.
Solution
Seeking a single source of truth, Brigidine transitioned to Sentral in 2017.
The model stood out by offering functional areas and modules in:
- Education management: Attendance; wellbeing; assessment and reporting; curriculum and learning plans
- School administration: Enrolments and admissions; health; staff absences; visitor management; asset manager; purchase orders
- Communication and engagement: Parent portal & app; student portal; messaging; meetings and interviews
- Finance and business management: Sentral Pay; StudentPayPlus; Fees and billing; accounts payable.
Schools can adopt as many or as few of Sentral’s modules as they wish, opting to customise for a more tailored configuration.
Brigidine began a staged rollout, focusing on core Sentral modules of attendance, roll marking, and reporting.
Refinement: From data to action
Even with Sentral in place, staff wanted more: not just data collection, but actionable insights.
“The problem wasn’t a lack of data – it was that information lived in different places and wasn’t always easy to interpret or act on,” Leone says.
Teachers less confident with digital tools often relied on colleagues to extract or visualise reports, delaying access to valuable insights.
Leone says: “We’d have some notes in a chronicle, others in wellbeing records, and different flags in class lists or attendance logs. It was hard to see the whole student at once, and that made things like differentiation, parent meetings, or proactive intervention more difficult than they needed to be.”
To bridge the gap, Brigidine partnered with Sentral’s data analytics consultant John Russell to co-design a custom dashboard using Microsoft Power BI. It’s a proprietary tool for creating interactive data visualisations. The aim: to create a streamlined, visual interface where teachers and leaders could see each student’s attendance, wellbeing, academic trends, and discipline records at a glance.
“Sentral doesn’t pretend to have every bespoke need off the shelf – and that’s a good thing,” Leone adds. “What they offer is flexibility. They’ve supported us to build the kind of tools we need, when we need them.”
John adds: “What matters is that we work with schools to solve their real problems – together. We’ve been working closely with Leone and her team to understand how they’ve historically reported and what they need now, so we can help them unlock insights directly from within Sentral.”
Early results and ongoing development
The dashboard, currently in limited release for school leadership, is already changing the way staff engage with student data.
“You can look at a single student and get a snapshot – grades over time, attendance patterns, flagged wellbeing concerns – all in one place,” Leone says. “That changes the quality of conversations we can have, whether it’s in a classroom planning meeting or a pastoral care check-in.
“We’re more likely to ‘know our students’ and not let them slip under the radar without getting the necessary supports.”
As the dashboard expands to more staff later in 2025, Brigidine expects it will build data confidence across the board, making it easier for everyone to support students proactively.
Sentral’s support has extended beyond software delivery. From early migration and data cleaning to co-designing tailored solutions, the Sentral team has worked closely with Brigidine to ensure the system evolves with the school’s needs.
“We’ve been able to customise how we use it, whether that’s building our own training videos, integrating wellbeing workflows, or now co-developing a dashboard,” Leone says.
Nicole notes the improvements in finance: “Invoicing is quicker, more flexible, and parents can now set their own direct debit schedules. That saves time on our end and improves the experience for families.”
She’s keen for further enhancements, especially around managing complex fee arrangements, but is confident Sentral is listening and responsive.
Looking ahead
Brigidine’s journey demonstrates that with the right partnership and a willingness to innovate, schools can turn data challenges into opportunities for better outcomes.
As the dashboard becomes available to all staff, the focus remains on empowerment – ensuring every team member, from classroom to business office, has the insights and tools to support student success.
“We weren’t just looking for a dashboard,” says Leone. “We wanted something that spoke directly to how our school works – something that would evolve with us, not sit static. Sentral has supported us to grow the system as our needs evolved.”
The school’s use of Sentral is evolving into a fully embedded solution, supporting academic records, wellbeing, co-curricular tracking, student awards, finance, and parent communications – with future plans to leverage AI to further enhance engagement with families.
For John, this project also reveals a broader truth: schools need tools that simplify, not complicate, their data experience, making it easier for educators to focus on what matters most – supporting students.
"We weren’t just looking for a dashboard. We wanted something that spoke directly to how our school works – something that would evolve with us, not sit static."
