[Clone for testing only] Scaling with one: Irfan College’s smart approach to school management

When Irfan College opened in 2013, Excel spreadsheets tracked attendance and student details. Growth soon made this quickly unworkable. The school then implemented Sentral on an on-premises server, moving three years ago to the cloud-based version.

Though this occurred before Yücel joined, he has seen its benefits firsthand. Cloud hosting brings peace of mind.

“Anything about the student…Sentral is the source of truth for us,” says IT Administrator Yücel Ufacıklıgil.

Sentral delivers confidence, security, and time savings, he says, which is exactly what a busy school needs to support growth.

The challenge

When Irfan College opened in 2013, Excel spreadsheets tracked attendance and student details. Growth soon made this quickly unworkable. The school then implemented Sentral on an on-premises server, moving three years ago to the cloud-based version.

Though this occurred before Yücel joined, he has seen its benefits firsthand. Cloud hosting brings peace of mind.

“Moving to the cloud means we don’t have to manage a server on site. It just made sense,” he says. “It saves me a heap of time because I don’t have to worry about backups and backend security for Sentral.”

With cloud hosting, backups and recovery are automatic; security is handled with user access controls and two-factor authentication.

Day-to-day operations

Today, Sentral underpins Irfan’s everyday life – from attendance and assessment to wellbeing and parent communications.

Every detail about a student – from attendance to wellbeing – is centralised in Sentral, Yücel explains.

Teachers record assessments in Markbooks that flow straight into reports. “Rolling over reports from previous periods saves heaps of time,” he explains. “I don’t need to set up from scratch – once the Markbooks are linked, grades and effort just flow in.”

Office administrators use Sentral to log sickbay incidents, late arrivals, and early departures, ensuring medical and wellbeing records are consistently tracked. For Yücel, the biggest efficiency is that everything is in one place. “Sentral brings everything together,” he says.

New staff and students onboard quickly, supported by Sentral’s built-in help videos and Yücel’s one-on-one or small group training. “There are no real barriers – Sentral is fairly simple to use.”

Parent engagement and communication

Approximately 93 percent of families use the Sentral Parent Portal for absences, academic reports, and notices – that’s more than 220 families logging in regularly.

“The Parent Portal is fantastic for keeping everyone informed.”

During Ramadan, when classes finish earlier, Sentral enables instant reminders, so parents never miss the change. This reduces unnecessary calls and emails to the front office.

With near-universal uptake, the Portal has freed up admin time and improved compliance reporting for the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) and the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD).

“If we didn’t have Sentral, we’d be stuck doing manual roll calls, scattered sick bay records, and messy comms lists,” Yücel says.

Impact

Sentral cuts manual work and mistakes.

Student data is secure and up to date. Incident resolution is also faster thanks to Sentral’s built-in issue tracking, while all student and compliance information is just a click away. IT time focuses on staff support, not troubleshooting.

“Without Sentral, we’d be juggling separate systems every day,” says Yücel.

Integration and simplicity

Seamless integrations into Sentral are key. The school uses Google Classrooms as its learning management system. The Oliver library system syncs swiftly; and enrolment data flows directly from Digistorm into Sentral through APIs.

“With Digistorm, families enter their details once, and it updates straight into Sentral, which saves us a lot of time.”

Staff onboarding is straightforward, supported by Sentral’s built-in help videos and Yücel’s one-on-one training.

The road ahead

Irfan College relies on Sentral, but Yücel is keen to expand its use. Xero is its finance system now, but he advocates for Sentral’s Finance module paired with Activities.

“Having Activities fully used, once Sentral’s Finance Module is set up, will save time and streamline payments. Parents will be able to see all invoices and what’s due in the app.” These modules will further reduce paperwork and make payments clearer for families and staff.

“At the moment, accounts email parents with what they owe. We want these features to make things clearer and smoother,” Yücel says. Future goals focus on making school processes even faster and more transparent.

Irfan College shows how a lean team can run smoothly and scale with the right systems. Sentral lets staff focus on growth and wellbeing, not IT headaches.

“Without Sentral, things would be manual and scattered. For a one-person IT team, it’s a lifesaver,” he says.

Did you know?

‘Irfan’ in Islamic thought is the highest form of knowledge – born from uniting knowledge with love, surpassing wisdom (knowledge plus action) and knowledge alone.

Yücel Ufacıklıgil

IT Administrator, Irfan College

"Approximately 93 percent of families use the Sentral Parent Portal for absences, academic reports, and notices – that’s more than 220 families logging in regularly. The Parent Portal is fantastic for keeping everyone informed."