John Paul College delivers a contemporary co-educational Australian curriculum grounded in traditional values from Early Learning to Year 12. Located in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, the school was founded in 1982 and currently educates approximately 2000 students.

Improving cohesive use of school data

John Paul College initially relied on multiple spreadsheets, documents and systems to support its learning management process, but that created data silos and a lack of consistency. It first implemented the Synergetic School Management System several years ago to provide a single source of truth for all school data.  

Later the college wanted to move in the strategic direction of online continuous reporting so that its rich data could be captured, analysed and reported on. The objective was to inform and positively impact student learning.

In order to achieve our goal of improved communication between students, parents and teachers we needed a learning management system to connect all stakeholders.

Belinda Guerra
Dean of Secondary Studies
John Paul College, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Stack of stones symbolising software stack

Integrating SEQTA in the software stack

John Paul College added SEQTA, the leading wellbeing and visible learning platform, to its ed-tech stack. SEQTA was implemented in 2015 to run alongside the college’s existing Synergetic school management system to provide a cohesive, holistic approach towards learning, wellbeing, school management and communications.

Implementing Synergetic and SEQTA from Education Horizons has enabled John Paul College to optimise its learning management and school management systems and enabled them to work seamlessly together.

The school’s strategic direction and focus were moving towards continuous reporting and visible learning. A big driver for the school when deciding to integrate SEQTA was the need to improve communication throughout so that parents and children were given visibility of reporting and learning outcomes. The project successfully created a greater connection between teachers, parents and students.

We started on the journey in relation to a goal for meeting the needs of an online continuous reporting ideal. We wanted it to have an impact on student learning.

Belinda Guerra
Dean of Secondary Studies
John Paul College, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

SEQTA and Synergetic working together

The John Paul College community has high expectations for the quality of end-of-semester reporting and the continuous reporting required by ATAR, IB and QCE. It was a priority for the learning management and school management systems to communicate seamlessly.

Synergetic integrates well with third-party systems. The Education Horizons development teams frequently develop API integrations to ensure that systems connect well. It is easy to extract and import rich data. SEQTA supports this with the ability to compare students, classes, lessons and much more. Data from Synergetic can be surfaced in Microsoft Power BI to generate real-time interactive dashboards. It can also be exported to Microsoft Excel.

Synergetic current student dashboard

Another benefit that John Paul College identifies from the two systems working together is the ability to share fees and billing from Synergetic through the SEQTA Engage App. Parents can use the single sign-on feature of the parent portal to stay connected to the school.

We share fees and billing to parents through the SEQTA Engage App and find that parents can log in more easily with the single sign on environment.

Nick Burton
Infrastructure Manager
John Paul College, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

SEQTA has been a confidence builder for the secondary schools’ teachers as they used it more frequently, particularly during COVID; it gave them the chance to embrace the system and develop their competence. They now feel incredibly positive about the use of SEQTA as a wellbeing and visible learning platform.

Student engagement

SEQTA has enabled teachers to mark draft assignments in its marksbook and provide feedback to the college’s students. Those students can use pre-assessment ratings and create comments for their teachers to review both pre and post-assessment, which is a great way to engage the students and give them a voice and ownership of their learning journey.

John Paul College uses the online forum feature in SEQTA so that students can ask questions regarding an assignment and get real-time responses from teachers, thus assisting all students involved in that assignment who may have been hesitant to ask for clarification.

Using SEQTA’s learning analytics helps us see a big picture view of student progress, student improvement and where issues might occur.

Belinda Guerra
Dean of Secondary Studies
John Paul College, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

John Paul College students

Student wellbeing

With such a significant focus on re-engaging students after the pandemic, the ability to record and view wellbeing notes and the availability of an effective pastoral workspace is essential. SEQTA can capture, analyse and report on students’ wellbeing and then identify trends and insights into students who would benefit from counselling or intervention.

Teachers find SEQTA particularly effective; they use the pastoral notes efficiently and frequently. Staff are able to select the right pastoral note to alert appropriate people to potential issues that students may be having.

Belinda Guerra
Dean of Secondary Studies
John Paul College, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Synergetic and SEQTA logos

Why choose SEQTA and Synergetic together?

By using both SEQTA and Synergetic alongside each other you connect all the operational data of the school with the teaching and wellbeing elements. This creates a holistic view of the whole school.

The two systems integrate and work seamlessly together; instead of having data silos and multiple programs with conflicting information you combine your knowledge into systems that work for you.

Teachers can stay in one environment as SEQTA is integrated with Teams and Google Classroom.

The benefits

SEQTA is the world’s premium student learning and wellbeing platform bringing visible learning to the forefront of education.

Synergetic is the proven school management system that connects your whole community, with the richest K-12 data set to streamline academic and operational processes and drive results in your school

Together they can:

  • connect rich student data, generating powerful wellbeing and engagement insights to help your school grow;
  • provide a single source of truth through one connected system, optimising your entire school – saving time, enabling collaboration and  empowering informed decisions;
  • make learning visible so you can maximise progress and achievement with SEQTA’s evidence-based tools;
  • enable parents and carers to participate in their child’s education without extra admin for teachers by using SEQTA Engage;
  • automate purchase order workflows and authorisations for your community database through Synergetic’s fully integrated finance systems;
  • manage enrolment applications, events, fundraising activities and communications with past and current students.

Talk to our team

Our expert team of software consultants will be pleased to offer a live interactive demonstration to show what SEQTA and Synergetic in combination can do for your school. Call +61 1800 498 642 or email sales@educationhorizons.com.