The Business Of School - Brought To You By Cole Connect

Toni Powell is a renowned speaker known for her hilarious keynotes and ridiculously simple (yet wildly effective) wellbeing hacks that people actually remember and use. She's an author, award-winning filmmaker, and the unforgettable subject of an ABC's Australian Story episode called Let There Be Light. Her powerful Goalcast talk The Power of Words has reached over 15 million viewers worldwide. During the pandemic, Victoria University invited Toni to create a coached wellbeing program for 12 exhausted school principals. That program—now called HAPPY HEALTHY STRONG TEAMS—was such a hit it went on to be offered through the WA Department of Education's Leadership Institute for two full years. The program has also been run by DoE NSW and some principal associations have offered it to their members. To date, more than 500 school and Department leaders have taken part in this fun, fast, and refreshingly easy approach to culture change and staff wellbeing.

Paul is Head of Marketing and Sales at The Alpha School System (TASS), a Brisbane-based software company that develops software for the independent school sector throughout Australia and overseas. Through four product lines, TASS provides solutions for all key operating areas, including school management, student management, and educational data analytics.An initiative-driven and experienced leader with over 25 years of expertise across all facets of business, Paul is adept at translating complex business challenges into realistic, achievable solutions and driving execution through high-performance teams.

Originally from a finance and accounting background, Ravi's passion for technology inevitably led him to leadership roles in the ERP and cloud services space. An innovator at heart, the next logical step was founding his own technology company, where he'd be able to create solutions and see the difference they made firsthand. Since then, he's been solving business problems and enabling lasting change for multinational organisations. Feoda is a technology platform that brings Orcale Netsuite into the education sector to meet innovatively the finance needs of schools.

Amy's background in schooling has suitably led to her current role at Torrens Valley Christian School as an Application Support Officer in the I.T. Department. Amy has previously worked in China at an international school and in a variety of roles with the admin team at Torrens Valley.Change is no stranger to the modern school and in her unique role for a school, Amy has worked with leadership and staff at Torrens Valley through various system and process changes.

We talk with John Somerset about schools being financially sustainable and what challenges they face today. We also dive into what the future may hold for school finance and the new strategies we will see implemented.

As part of the TASS on Tour event in Adelaide, The Alpha School System invited Cole School Experts to be part of the panel discussing the topic of Managing Change in Schools. Along with leadership representatvies from local schools, Torrens Valley Christian School and Prince Alfred College, our COO, Kenton Newall, joined the conversation around the evolving world of school technology and how best to navigate that involving all stakeholders of the school. Join TASS host Meredith Borger as she facilitates this informative discussion.

Matt is a passionate and dedicated student of exceptional performance. He founded Driven From Within with a desire to help schools and their teams engage in continuous and sustainable improvement. With a master's degree in leadership and Organisational Culture, and application in real world settings, Matt has discovered the power of the intentional, purposeful, and skilful development of personal character and school culture.

For almost 30 years Brad has worked in Accounting, Finance, ICT and Business Management roles in a variety of corporate and not-for-profit businesses, most recently Education. Brad's ability to mitigate financial, environmental, and reputational risk as Business Director for Lutheran Education in SA, NT & WA has kept him engaged with the education sector for the last 7 years. Brad diligently partners with their learning community's Board, Principal and Business Manager, to achieve missional goals whilst also ensuring regulatory compliance and reporting obligations are met.

Kym has an excess of 25 years experience in the financial services industry, holds a Bachelor of Business, is a Chartered Accountant and Financial Planner. Over the years Kym has specialised in assisting schools to secure and enhance their financial position. Her diverse experience and broad knowledge enable her to create financial strategies to achieve her client's needs and long term financial goals.

With a robust background in both educational leadership and technology, Hayden Gyles from Veracross combines a passion for improving school operations with a deep understanding of client needs. Join us as we discuss the changing SIS landscape in Australia, share observational trends, and see how vendors are being evaluated and how schools are resourcing implementations.

Award-winning Speaker Trudy MacDonald from TalentCode HR, shares pearls of wisdom pertaining to Effective School Leadership. From School Councils, Strategies and Building a Culture of Performance, we discuss future trends that may impact the roles of school councils and leadership teams. Highlighting accountability practices, characteristics of high perfomance teams, and balancing strategy and operations, there is sure to be some insightful takeaways for everyone.

Join us along with marketing guru Timo Nieuwoudt from Digistorm as we deep dive into the School admissions and marketing arena. Digistorm has developed cutting-edge technologies to streamline school administrative processes. Let's find out how schools are navigating change management, structuring their Teams and how the Business Office can ensure their teams are using tools to the benefit of the school.

Discussing recent data and findings on school fee trends from their annual fee insights report, we speak to Anthony McCausland from Feesable. Some of the main challenges, tactics and strategies used by schools to communicate fee changes are discussed along with some valuable feedback from both schools and parents. Anthony founded Feesable out of a desire to create a simple solution to help parents understand school fees, and also to create a useful tool for assisting schools with their interaction with parents.

School boards, principals and business managers need to make well-informed decisions about financial risk and ensure the financial viability and sustainability of their school. Being able to convert large amounts of school data into easy-to-understand reports to help inform decisions about current and future financial health can be both difficult and time consuming. With us in this episode is our online guest John Somerset, to chat about Somerset Education's Key Indicator Scenario Builder and how it is a game-changer for schools navigating financial viability. John Somerset has practiced in chartered accounting for over 35 years, with the past 25 years dedicated to the financial health of non-government schools. Aswell as a Bachelor of Commerce, John has a Masters by research on his passion – financial sustainability of schools.

Join us as we explore the importance of the school enrolment process for school fee management and the impact of not getting it right. Including loads of practical information, we chat with Alice Carter from Platinum Collection Agency about the vital connection between the enrolment process and fee debt collection. Alice works closely with many schools to achieve cost-effective solutions to collect outstanding fees. Alice's credit management experience compliments her work with schools, to enables her to provide advice about the enrolment process, including enrolments terms and split family arrangements.

Wicus Wessels has over 15 years of financial experience across many industries and sectors. As Audit Partner at Crowe Audit, he maintains specialist skills in the areas of external audit in the Education sector. Addressing the increasing strain of school finances is a critical issue that many educational institutions face. Wicus interacts frequently with many school leaders about their financial risks and performance, and we talk with him on topics ranging from debtor recovery to increase in payroll costs, to capital projects.

Keeping up to date on law changes is important for any organisation, and it's very important that schools understand the impact on their commercial, employment, finance, building development and enrolment activities.To help us both understand recent updates to legislation and apply these practically to the business of school, we have with us in this episode our guest James Neate. James is a partner at Lynch Meyer Lawyers and has 35 plus years of experience practicing in all aspects of commercial disputes, insolvency and recoveries. James has wide experience working with schools and educational institutions. His experience includes providing advice in relation to fee collection and the negotiation of payment arrangements, as well as providing advice on enrolment documentation, terms and processes.

At Cole School Experts, we often see school payrolls with incorrect information, payroll staff spending valuable time searching for correct details, or payroll teams struggling to work effectively with other staff. We get it – oversights happen and navigating payroll can be difficult, but we find that risks and annoyances can be avoided, or at least mitigated, with just a little pre-planning and some quality staff education. So, in this episode we are joined by Lauren Harchak, a Senior Payroll Specialist, to chat about some common payroll mistakes the Cole School Experts team often see in schools. Also she will be offering a few helpful tips that will make these pain points, well, a little less painful.