Caroline Chisholm Catholic College is a Year 7-12 Catholic secondary school with three campuses based in Melbourne’s inner west. The private school caters to 1,500 students and 200 staff.
The school is passionate about student progress and operates under the values of Faith, Acceptance, Compassion and Excellence. Principal Robert Brennan leads the school under the belief that ‘every student has talents and we give them every chance to succeed.’ This can be seen through the school’s year on year improvements in the NAPLAN and ATAR results.
When the College first engaged Centorrino Technologies (CT), they were led by Principal Marco DiCesare, who completed his eight-year term in 2020 and then accepted a post as Principal at Marcellin College.
The Challenge
While Caroline Chisholm Catholic College had a strong ICT team and quality technology backing their infrastructure, then-Principal Marco DiCesare noticed potential issues starting to develop in their IT environment.
The College had so many components, functions and systems spread across their campuses that they were unsure where they had ‘under-invested, over-invested or even overlooked’ the numerous parts of their complex infrastructure. This made it difficult to maintain best-practice for their IT operations.
‘We knew professional learning was going to become an important factor for us. We also acknowledged that we wanted best practice for our ICT team. What we quickly realised was that it was going to become too difficult for us as a college,’ Principal DiCesare said.
And while the College maintained an effective IT environment, they were especially eager to prepare for the future so they could continue to be a technology leader in the education sector.
‘Today’s ICT climate is changing rapidly, [so] we needed a team of professionals to come through the College and really do an audit of what we had, but more importantly, what we should be looking towards in the future.’
Why did the College choose CT?
Deputy Principal Anne Marie Cairns had a longstanding and trusted relationship with CT through an engagement with the IT company at a former school. Given CT’s strong values and previous success, she had full confidence CT could deliver exactly what was needed at Caroline Chisholm Catholic College.
CT was also chosen for its strong reputation in the education sector. As a trusted Australian managed service and technology organisation, CT was well-known for delivering services, security, solutions and support that are critical to maintaining a modern educational organisation.
With this experience and the support of the Deputy Principal, CT quickly began auditing the College’s systems and processes to improve learning and teaching outcomes for the school.
The Solution
CT’s audit of the College’s IT environment found several areas of attention where the CT team could provide their expertise. CT delivered significant benefits and a higher quality IT experience for the students, including:
- Optimising staff IT efficiency to gain the most productivity with the least interruptions to their roles.
- Managing the student laptop program alongside staff hardware to improve response times, end-user experience and achieve potential cost savings.
- Reducing downtime for IT infrastructure and the school network.
- Improving the reliability and bandwidth of the school’s broadband account and connection.
- Increasing system responsiveness to enable finding, tracking and resolving issues before they escalate.
Principal DiCesare was especially satisfied with the speed of customer service from CT’s multi-award-winning Service Desk.
‘We’re a school of 1,500 students, approximately 200 staff, and what we found was our questions, our concerns, our problems were being addressed more quickly,’ said Principal DiCesare.
The Results
CT reviewed the school’s broadband connection with Telstra and doubled the connection speed while reducing costs, impressing the Caroline Chisholm team due to being a benefit they ‘hadn’t even acknowledged needing to be done. CT delivered us faster broadband for our students and staff with less money,’ Principal DiCesare said.
While these outcomes and benefits were significant, the priority and focus of the College’s team is always on helping their students. Beyond the cost savings, the CT overhaul of the school’s Laptop Fleet for students and staff left the biggest impact.
‘Previously there was a 24-hour turnaround for laptop replacements. Through CT, we negotiated an immediate swap between laptops. So if a student dropped one off, they’d pick up a hot swap laptop, and it meant our students’ learning wasn’t affected in any way. And that went for staff as well,’ Principal DiCesare explained.
CT’s ability to understand and deliver on the College’s vision to improve learning outcomes was central to the success of their services.
‘While the money was a bonus, it was actually the fact that the kids could keep learning no matter what happened that was the greatest benefit CT delivered our laptop program,’ Principal DiCesare said.