St Peter’s College, Auckland

Paper pains, stressed staff and moth-eaten medical data

Located in Auckland, New Zealand, The Christian Brothers established St Peter’s College in 1939. Today, the boys’ school is attended by more than 1,300 students, from years seven to 13, who are supervised by 109 staff members.

A Catholic school founded on the values of Edmund Rice, the college provides a comprehensive academic education paired with an extensive program of extracurricular activities, in which students are expected to actively participate — including music, sports, arts, cultural studies and drama. In line with the Catholic ethos of inclusivity and service to others, the school is community-focused, regard- ing the families of its students as part of one collective cohort.

But, maintaining and delivering the college’s broad range of extracurricular activities, designed to build that sense of community, proved a constant and growing challenge. St Peter’s ICT Services Coordinator, Margaret Miller, explains how traditional paper-based systems of planning and managing school trips and events, in combination with manual workflows for collecting consent and student medical information from parents, became impractical. And, therefore, why a digital solution was needed to streamline the whole process.