Reducing the Everyday Burden of School Administration

Making annual consent forms easier for families and staff

Annual school consent forms once involved sending paper home with students, waiting for it to reach parents, and hoping it would come back completed.

Working with MySchool’s support team, St. Margaret’s incorporated much of that information collection into digital questionnaires. Parents can submit their responses digitally, and those responses automatically populate student profiles.

This reduces the manual work involved in transferring responses into student records and makes the information easier for staff to access. MySchool’s reporting tools also allow colleagues to retrieve information such as photographic consents themselves, supported by internal guidance on how to run and export reports.

“A lot of the manual process has been alleviated just by working with support and understanding how we were able to build out those questionnaires in a way that was not only easier for us to manage the data, but also for parents to submit the information that we needed.”

Making BC Ministry of Education reporting more manageable

For St. Margaret's, ministry reporting requires accurate student information and coordination across school teams and families. This includes the 1701 submission, BC’s student data collection used to support enrolment reporting and funding calculations. Other provinces have their own reporting processes, such as Ontario’s OnSIS, but the underlying need is similar: reliable student records that schools can turn into accurate submissions.

MySchool supports the extraction of that data for ministry reporting. Reports can be reviewed and submitted, and errors traced back to the information that needs correcting.

A few years ago, Deb would have described ministry reporting as a particularly demanding part of her role. Today, she describes the process as streamlined and straightforward.

What was once a highly demanding process has become much easier to manage. Deb attributes that progress to her growing familiarity with the data and how MySchool works with ministry reporting tools, alongside improvements to those tools.

“That process is so streamlined and simple at this point. It’s no longer a situation that’s stressful and time-consuming.”

The responsibility for checking the data remains, but producing and submitting the reports is now easier to administer.

Adapting information and reports as the school develops

St. Margaret’s IB programme development has introduced new requests for student and subject information. MySchool has supported the reporting required by IB coordinators, while naming conventions and data within the platform have been adjusted to reflect the school’s developing programmes.

That flexibility extends to report cards. When a vice principal asked whether comments could be restructured to say more about the IB streams, Deb was confident the change was possible and estimated that it would take less than a day to make.

“Customization is a big piece. I always share with my colleagues, if we can’t do it now, there’s a willingness to potentially build that out, which is always highly reassuring for the team here.”

St. Margaret’s works with MySchool’s dedicated customer success manager and support team to address changing needs and explore ways to improve school processes. The support team has helped put specific changes into practice, from setting up the admissions application to building digital questionnaires that automatically populate student profiles.

For St. Margaret’s, that ability to adjust the system matters. This means the platform can support changes in how the school organises and communicates information as its academic programmes develop.

A support relationship that helps turn ideas into improvements

MySchool’s support team has played a direct role in these changes, from supporting the build-out of the new admissions application to sharing the benefits of digital questionnaires that populate student profiles.

The relationship gives the school access to practical advice about what the platform can do and how other schools approach similar needs. Support helps the team explore options and configure workflows around the information St. Margaret’s needs to collect and use.

For Deb, the support is the first thing she would highlight to another school considering MySchool:

“I think they would quickly recognise the high level of support that MySchool provides. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. After working on numerous systems through my career, I would describe it as world-class.”

The improvements already made show how St. Margaret’s continues to gain value from the platform by connecting more of its processes and working with support to put changes into practice.

For St. Margaret’s, those improvements are tangible: less duplicate admissions work, more consistent application fee collection, digital consent responses feeding student records, and a more manageable reporting process.

Switch to MySchool and repeat St. Margaret’s success

If your team is entering applicant information twice, chasing paper consent forms, or spending too much time preparing reports, St. Margaret’s experience offers practical examples of what could change. Connecting these processes in MySchool has helped the school reduce manual work, collect application fees more consistently, and make information easier to access.

The starting point is understanding where your school’s processes create unnecessary work. From there, MySchool’s team can help you explore how the platform could support your needs and put improvements into practice.

Request a demo to see how MySchool could support your school’s admissions, reporting, and everyday administration.