Powerful Features That Matter

When you first subscribe to SchoolDocs we'll ask you to complete an online tailoring questionnaire. This lets us know what makes your school unique and allows us to tailor our standard policies and procedures to fit your school. You'll also need to check your site before it goes live. Once you've finished that, the majority of the work is done!
 
From that point on, SchoolDocs will save your school precious time. We'll research the latest requirements, put them into easy to understand language and update your policies and procedures for you. We'll also prepare and process regular reviews in consultation with you, and manage the 'paperwork'. You'll no longer need policy and procedure folders dotted around the school that constantly need to have pages updated. All your information will all be online, up-to-date and easy for the whole school community to access. Leaving your school time to focus on leading learning.

Advisory Emails 

You will receive advisory emails a couple of times a term - with recommendations, reminders about reviews and audits, upcoming changes, and other information that relates to school policies and procedures. The emails are usually sent to three school recipients of your choice, e.g. the principal, a board member, and an administrator or staff member. The advisories are written in a user-friendly style with easy to follow actions.

A nominated person from the school then notifies the reviewers (board of trustees, staff and/or parents) of the review, through the school newsletter or via email.

SchoolDocs recommends that your board of trustees delegates a member to be responsible for overseeing SchoolDocs and includes it as a regular topic on the board meeting agenda, and/or the principal cuts and pastes the SchoolDocs advisory into their principal's report to the board. This will ensure that your board stays up-to-date with your policies and procedures and engages with reviews and new content regularly, rather than in a big burst which often tends to happen in busy schools.

Staff are able to access the school’s policies and procedures easily and can review online in a matter of minutes. Many of our SchoolDocs schools find it beneficial to review collaboratively, as a staff at a syndicate/team meeting, or as a board at a board meeting, and send the feedback collectively as one submission.

Policies and procedures are a necessary part of school life. However, they are not the reason a school exists. SchoolDocs believes that principals, senior management, and boards need to be supported to focus on leading learning. SchoolDocs provides content expertise, delivery expertise, and the ability for schools to collaborate painlessly to develop best practice. 

Our system is geared to allow subscriber schools to avoid re-inventing the wheel thousands of times over, to dramatically reduce costs, improve the effectiveness of their policies and procedures , and free-up trustees and staff to focus on more important activities.

• SchoolDocs will save you time and money: 
  • No more paper copies to keep current and distributed.
  • No more secretarial time spent formatting, versioning and copying paper copies.
  • No grappling with other online formats such as GoogleDocs and finding that the time burden of drafting and maintaining the set is still considerable.
• The risk of poorly drafted policy is minimised - you have input from experts all around the country.
• The policies and procedures are online and accessible to the whole school community.
• The content is monitored and updated to comply with New Zealand legislation, ERO requirements, and other audits, and in response to advice sent to schools.
• The principal, who is under increasing pressure to delegate administrative activities, can spend more time performing important strategic, leadership, educational and communication functions.
• The SchoolDocs review process streamlines reviewing and the advisory service helps to keep you compliant.