In a time when many K-12 schools across Australia are on the fence about the future of their institution’s tech-stack, Phillip Heath AM, Head of Barker College, has made a visionary decision to overhaul the school’s Student Information System (SIS). More than just a technical upgrade, this move is part of a strategic vision and a deep commitment to community. With over 135 years of history behind Barker College, Heath saw beyond the heritage gates and into the future, choosing to embrace change not for convenience, but for impact.
Faced with mounting frustration from staff and parents, Heath led a transition to Veracross based on unanimous input from a steering committee, a decision that has already begun to transform the way Barker operates. His leadership exemplifies what it means to put people first, ensuring that technology serves the mission, not the other way around. In this Q&A, Heath shares the journey, the challenges and future projections, offering insights and inspiration for any school ready to take a leap toward a more connected and empowered future.
What I’ve appreciated about Veracross is that despite the fact that it’s a well-established product…they were prepared to listen. And to have a provider listen is a rare thing.
Can you tell us a little about Barker College?
Barker College is a co-educational school for pre-kindergarten to year 12 with over 2,800 students, in the upper North Shore of Sydney, with a wide reach and 135 years of history. Every child is unique, and every school is unique. We love what we do, and we love our students and staff and the culture and community of the school. In practical terms, though, we want to be outward-looking. We have mint gates outside, which have an 1850s origin, and we want to look beyond the mint gates, out into the world. We run three Aboriginal schools that are connected to us, we also run a refugee school, and we have a brilliant robotics program that takes Australian kids out to compete on a level footing with the best in the world.
What were some of the biggest frustrations your team were experiencing with the technology that you were using prior to Veracross?
In the years that I’ve been a principal of schools, I’ve had three journeys of migrating Student Information Systems (SIS) from one to another. And it’s not done lightly. It’s like the exodus. It’s enormously stressful for everybody because we need to learn new systems and then adapt them and adapt ourselves to new ways of doing things.
The driver needs to be strong enough to overcome that resistance and reluctance. In our case, the driver was in deep dissatisfaction about the speed, the serviceability, the access and the breadth of our existing system. It was simply no longer fit for service. We needed it to do more. We needed it to be faster. The frustration levels as I moved across staff rooms or moved into admin and saw people just shaking their heads at their desk, saying, “Will this ever give me the answer that I’m looking for?” It was so compelling. We just had to do something. And we found Veracross.
We run regular pulse check surveys with our staff twice a year. We also run an annual survey amongst the parents. And there was a repeated pattern which deepened from an episode into a full-blown narrative right across the school. There was frustration that we were not able to do the things that we wanted to do. The immediacy of data, the ability to visit a student to know who they are, to have a full academic track, and to have that responsively.
What really drove us through that first decision gate was the staff frustration. And then when the parents begin to express frustration, not because they knew the system well, but because they sensed something was wrong in the processes here. It became a compelling argument. And then we began to search, and we had to search for perfection. We had a whole range of things that were non-negotiable. What was so compelling to me about Veracross was three things. It was the speed, the stability of the data set and the understanding of what a school is trying to do every day; what all its people are trying to do for the students and families every day. It seemed to me that Veracross was understanding that and wanting to deliver it, and that yearning to deliver what it was that we were searching for became very convincing to me.
What were your non-negotiables during the search for a new SIS?
The number one non-negotiable was speed of handling a large data set, and secondly, the ability for the information to be consumed intelligibly by people whose daily work is not focused on the data piece itself. They want to be users, and they don’t want to be bothered about how this happens. And then the third thing that I was looking for, others were looking for other things, but I was really yearning to see a coherent academic track connected to the student information system. So, I knew what the students were learning and doing and how they were performing quickly. And they were, for me, essential pieces. There were other pieces that others were looking for: finance packages, alumni, donor, information and so forth, all of which were important. I’m not dissing those, but for me, those crucial elements had to be there. I needed to know that when I search, I was going to get accurate, reliable and efficient results for my search.
The whole panel, somewhat unanimously, on a fairly mechanised, point-scoring system, chose Veracross.
Tell us about the process of searching for a new SIS?
This process ran parallel to some substantial capital works processes that we were doing at the school. And the breakthrough, personally, was to apply a project control group approach to delivering an outcome. You would do that with a building; you would have the decision gateways and your Gantt chart to know where you were. Applying that same discipline became incredibly important for me.
Veracross, at the time, was comparatively new in this part of Australia. Our previous system was similarly new, and there was a hesitancy to embrace, for a second time, a new product that was promising, but didn’t have a history in a relatively confined marketplace. But there were a range of reasons why the whole panel, somewhat unanimously, on a fairly mechanised, point-scoring system, chose Veracross. And they speak to the three priorities that I shared. And then there was high satisfaction about the other issues. This SIS looked to have the strength and capacity behind it. But also, the ingenuity and adaptability to enter a new market and not fall over or walk away because they thought it was just too hard.
I have an outstanding music teacher whose PhD was in music and music education but who’s very adept at UCT (Universal Classroom Technology), speaks fluently with ICT (Information and Communication Technology) experts, but also fluently with the common room. The educators placing him as the project control leader was, I might say, an outstanding decision. And he has done wonderfully well because he straddles those worlds. Using the analogy of a construction process, he made sure that the brief was right. If you’re not clear on your brief, then a provider can’t possibly know what you’re looking for. An architect can’t know what you want in your building. They’ll just focus on what the building looks like, and there’s merit in that. But the building needs to work for the user. And I take the same analogy with the SIS. It needs to work for the user. It can look as lovely as it can; the forms and the front-facing elements can be as beautiful and as stylish as you like, but if it doesn’t work, there will be great frustration.
This large team then gradually whittled down, including our governance. We signed off on the brief, we looked at the shortlist. We then made our decision, and we created a pathway between where we were and where we wanted to be. We use that analogy from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: We were thus far steeped in blood that returning back would be more wearisome. Do we cross the river, or do we go back and fix what we had? It was quite a brave decision and the right one to keep going to cross the river into something different. To date, we’ve been delighted with the results.
How have you been preparing parents for what’s coming, and have you had any sort of pushback or positive feedback on the change?
Staff need to be comfortable and confident that when they go to their desk, it’s going to do what they need because they only have a few seconds for it to do that before they rush off to what’s next. But the parents, similarly, need to be confident that the information that they’re receiving looks useful, that they can find what they need to know. How do I call with my child sick? Has the assessment been finished? Do we know what the mark was?
We formed a parent reference group quite early on. And because it’s a large community, there are a lot of people who are in the profession in different aspects, so they jumped on enthusiastically. The first 2 or 3 meetings were basically a mental health recovery about frustrations with the existing system. And then we got into the comments about the design brief and then their best work was in the interface. We had dummy runs and sandboxes that people could play with and give us feedback on. We took that back to Veracross, so it’s been a pretty robust example. And what’s been really powerful is that we held these feedback sessions — and we had about ten of them and there were about 20 people involved in these sessions — and by the last few, the numbers had dwindled down to about 3 or 4, and in the last one, no one turned up. And I took that to be really positive. In other words, they felt heard. They were pleased with the result. Silence is golden. We didn’t need people to say, ‘oh, you’re fantastic. It’s awesome. How gorgeous is that? Didn’t you do a good job?’ We don’t need that. We need people to be able to comfortably get on with their lives and find what they need to know.
I would recommend bringing the parents on the journey as early as you can. Don’t be frightened by the feedback. Welcome it, enable it, and then respond to it. What I’ve appreciated about Veracross is that despite the fact that it’s a well-established product in another country where the education system is markedly different, they were prepared to listen. And to have a provider listen is a rare thing, particularly when it has a kind of global outlook on its work.
We’re partially live already in some aspects and the absence of observation and comment has been remarkable for such a sizable transition as we’ve just done. And it was not like that before. We’ve moved from one product to another before in a range of different areas, and with nowhere near the ease or equanimity that has just happened. In fact, I’d venture to suggest that most of the families really wouldn’t have noticed much except perhaps a slight change to the email address or higher levels of satisfaction about getting the information, which is what you want.
For the staff, for the teachers, for the students, for the parents, it’s been transformative. I’ll use that term cautiously, not with hyperbole, but because the lived experience for staff has been dramatically improved.
How do you feel about the future now that you’re starting to use Veracross? What impact do you think it’s going to have on your community as a whole?
For the staff, for the teachers, for the students, for the parents, it’s been transformative. I’ll use that term cautiously, not with hyperbole, but because the lived experience for staff has been dramatically improved.
Out of those improvements, then, should come higher levels of engagement with students and greater levels of satisfaction in our people-work, and greater confidence and comfort about the way in which data can inform growth and student thriving. I’m not a finance guy, so the part that I’m incredibly excited about is the extension of the academic tracking and developing that into character tracking and or experiential education. What are our students doing? Are they all thriving or are some just hiding under the radar a little bit? Are they all getting the best from their Barker experience? If you could do that at scale in ways that make the feedback digestible and useful, then I think something very powerful could happen.
In the academic and school administration space, it’s been superb. There’s no better way of describing it. The speed with which care givers can reach out to families, to know what’s happening to the students, the stuff in the classroom, to know who, where, what, when and why. It’s liberating.
What is the one piece of advice that you would give to a school considering a SIS change before they embark on the journey?
Get your brief right. Be very, very clear what you’re seeking. And then be resolute in the search to measure that brief against what you’re seeking. And in our experience, Veracross meet that.
Ready for change at your school?
Book a demo with our team to learn what’s possible with a Veracross SIS.
