School case study

The PARED Foundation

Since 1982, the PARED Foundation has been leading the way in personalised education, built on a united purpose between parents and teachers that creates a special, close-knit school community.

Fundamental to the PARED Foundation is the one of a kind mentoring system for each student that focuses on nurturing success and wellbeing, a key factor to the rising enrolments that PARED is experiencing.

Since founding Tangara School for Girls in North-Western Sydney, they continued to grow, establishing Redfield College also located in the north-west of Sydney, as well as Wollemi College and Montgrove College in Western Sydney.

The partnership

As the centralised function for four schools with over 2500 students combined, operational efficiency is critical to PARED and its finance team. Their system's functionality was not able to support the growing volume of enrolments and the complexities of payment plans, adding to the administrative burden on the finance team.

The time spent by the team manually modifying payment plans, following up payments with families was increasing, accelerating the need to manage their resources more effectively to provide their families with the best service possible.

PARED also identified the need for easy access and visibility of financial status for both their parents and the finance team.

Armed with this understanding they recognised that by streamlining operations they could sustainably strengthen their core finance function, support their growth and reduce administrative burden in order to provide their families with the best possible experience.

The PARED Foundation and Edstart partnership was built on the mutual value of the importance of how families interact with and experience school fee payments. Edstart understood how the operational impacts were affecting the experiences of PARED families, and through working together with PARED, identified how Edstart Plus could redefine their finance and operational function to deliver a better experience for their families.

To achieve this, Edstart worked with PARED to understand their unique centralised function to identify ways to innovate and streamline based on the data and workload from all four schools. Additionally, Edstart looked at the key priorities for PARED and how they operate to ensure they were achieving their goals.

The Edstart team supported the PARED team throughout implementation and continues to act as an extension of the team when supporting PARED parents.

The results

Within the first year of using Edstart Plus, the PARED Foundation saw benefits including improved collection rates, operational efficiencies and is able to deliver the experience they set out for their families.

Edstart Plus has continued to help streamline operations and deliver further financial benefits by reducing time spent on administrative and fee collection tasks, saving the finance team two full days per week. With reliable upfront cash flow in the bank, PARED has been able to plan more effectively with the added benefit of earning more interest.

The technology combined with the support of the Edstart team has enabled a 80% reduction in debtors.

The finance team uses the Edstart Plus portal daily to keep up to date on fee collection, reporting and to easily keep track of a family payment status, allowing them to see if families have missed a payment and proactively reach out.

For families Edstart Plus provides complete visibility of their payment plan, due dates and status - it's easy to use with simple payment and adjustment options available. Families also receive ongoing support from the Edstart team to help them manage their school fee payments easily and with clarity.

So far, Edstart Plus has delivered meaningful results for the PARED Foundation, helping them innovate their ways of working, achieve financial benefits and support their families with an enhanced payment experience.