Compass review

Compass is a school management system for Australian government, Catholic and independent schools. It combines the administration work of a student information system, such as attendance, student records and reporting, with a parent portal and mobile app. Parents use Compass to explain absences, give consent and pay for excursions, read school news, follow learning tasks and download semester reports. Schools can add modules for wellbeing, enrolments, curriculum planning and, if they run their own accounts, finance and billing.

Who it’s for

Compass fits Australian schools that want one login for staff and parents instead of separate systems for attendance, reports and permission notes. Parent guides published by government schools in Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland show how widely schools use it.

Each school chooses its modules, so two Compass schools can look quite different to a parent. A small primary might use attendance, events and news. A large secondary might add learning tasks, semester reports, wellbeing records and room bookings. Our student information system rankings list other systems to compare.

What it does well

Attendance is where most schools start. Staff mark the roll in Compass, and parents get a notification and can enter an explanation for an absence or late arrival in the app instead of phoning the front office.

Events are the other daily use. A school can publish an excursion or incursion, collect parent consent and take payment through Compass. The activity management tools also cover ticketed events, co-curricular programs and staffing for duties.

The teaching and learning tools cover curriculum planning, learning tasks with rubrics and feedback, skills tracking and semester reports. Parents see tasks and results in the same app where they explain absences, so the school has one place to send families. The wellbeing module records behaviour, sick bay visits and health incidents, with role-based access and audit trails for confidential records, which helps with duty-of-care record keeping.

Where it falls short

The app does not do everything the web version does. Several schools tell parents on their Compass help pages that not all features are available in the app, and one gives interim progress reports as an example. Expect questions from parents who can’t find something in the app, and tell them in your guide which tasks need a browser.

Compass is built around Australian school practice. Its attendance, enrolment and reporting tools follow how Australian schools work, so it is a weaker fit elsewhere, although Compass now also markets a UK version.

The number of modules and permissions means staff training matters. A school that turns everything on at once, without a plan for who uses what, ends up with half-used modules and confused parents. Our parent communication policy guide helps you decide which messages go through Compass and which go elsewhere.

Pricing

Compass does not publish prices. Schools request a quote or book a demo, and the price depends on the modules you take. Ask which modules the base price includes, whether the parent app and online payments cost extra, and what processing fees apply to excursion and event payments, because those fees affect how much of a camp payment reaches the school. Read our guide to the total cost of school software before you compare quotes.

Privacy and data

Compass’s privacy policy says that when a school makes Compass available to its community, the school administers the service, and that Compass will get express opt-in consent before sharing personal data with unrelated third parties for marketing. It also says some support-related data may be processed outside Australia. Government privacy statements, including one from the Northern Territory Department of Education, say Compass stores school data in its data centre in Melbourne. The Compass website describes role-based access and audit trails for confidential records, but we did not find published security certifications, so ask for them, and for a data processing agreement, before you sign. Our student data privacy checklist has the full list of questions.

Verdict

Compass is a sensible choice for Australian schools that want attendance, parent communication, events and reporting in one system with one app for families. Plan for the gaps between the app and the web version, and get a quote broken down by module. Schools that only need a messaging tool, or schools outside Australia, should compare the options in our parent communication rankings.

See the best Compass alternatives