Barnier Primary School said:

"RISC is such a great program. Used well, I estimate it could cut down paper use by the learning and welfare teams and counsellor by at least 50%. For example, when I assess a student, I do a 3-4 page report, and issue 
a copy for the Principal, the Leader of the Learning Support team, the Learning Support Teacher, the classroom teacher, and the parents. Now, I will append my report to a "Counsellor Report" RISC entry for the school personnel, and give a hard copy to the parents. Then I know that while ever the child is at the school, every teacher he/she has can see immediately that an assessment has been done, and when, and ask to read it.
As I see it, that maximises the effectiveness of my work. So often, teachers re-refer students who have already had an intensive learning assessment, and have special learning styles and needs, that the teacher doesn't know about.

Cronulla South Primary School said:

"I find RISC extremely powerful and latest version leaves ver 4 and 5 for dead.  We use it to track behavioural issues but also families who have accessed Student Assistance, students who have attended rep PSSA trials, District/Area G&T courses. I've even used it to log car rego plates when safety at the crossing drove me crazy. It can be used to log the chronic late arrivers etc etc. It is fully integrated with Word and I have set it up to generate counsellor referrals, minutes of our Learning Support Team, Legal type type documents (Enclosed Lands
Act), suspension letters all on school letterhead. I have started loading into it custody details.  It integrates well with Excel to create graphs of the number of boys in Year 3 who have received their platinum award, if you have use for that type of stuff.  The sky's the limit - as long as teachers are trained and supported in its use (it is user friendly) it can serve them rather than we be its servant."

Goulburn West Primary School said:

"I took the virtual tour and even though I have been using RISC for over 18 months I learnt some new tricks. I am very pleased to read about the interface with MS Word and Excel. It should eradicate one or two of the very minor irritations I had with V5. 

I do an analysis of contacts at the end of each month sending letters of concern to students with 5 or more contacts and letters of congratulation to those with no contacts. At the end of 2003 I was able to send home 167 letters (enrolment 388) of congratulations to students who had no contacts for the entire year. It was extremely well received by parents and students. Students now aim for the "no contact" letter. 

Your software is a very stable platform and easy to manage. I manage the package and all staff make contact entries. We are extremely happy with it so I hope V6 lives up to its predecessor's reliability."

Katoomba High School said:

"WE have used RISC for about half a year and found that it has helped us improve communication, tracking of students in a whole range of ways, at the same time that it reduces time and energy required.

Some of the current uses in the school:

• Standard tracking of welfare and discipline issues
• Use of Report to produce Welfare Action Plans for students on levels in the school. Because these can vary for individuals this is a critical communication tool - distributed to all faculties for filing in a communication folder.
• Preparation of a daily list of students on level 3, 4, 5 or suspension - allows reference to folder above.
• Letters to parents from faculties recognising good work
• All correspondence re incomplete homework and assignments
• Tracking all information for N-awards for SC and HSC
• Preparation of reports on individual students for parent interviews or in response to parent request. To do this, a Student Adviser prepares RISC form 'blanks' and sends a note to the classroom teachers concerned asking them to fill them in (usually with info re attendance,application and achievement) When complete this is recovered as a list and printed out.
• All lists for presentation night (again entered in individual faculties, printing of certificates, letters of invitation etc, etc)."

Narrabeen Sports High School said:

"We have RISC up and running at Narrabeen Sports High. We have networked its operation and I'm pleasantly surprised at how quickly staff are using the system. I am thinking of setting up an additional copy as a stand-alone for the DP to use for his student discipline and student contact purposes.

I am finding RISC a huge improvement in the area of communication among staff about student contacts. It has been accepted very well - a great job. We would be keen to use/trial any updated version that will enhance the power of this already very practical and valuable program."

Kadina High School said:

"My first exposure to RISC was during the last 3 weeks of Term 3, when V4.0 was installed and trialled on our school network, unfortunately, until then it had not been used. The vital factor was that I was able to incorporate all of the features from our existing, very good student referral system.

The added benefits of RISC have been, its ease of use; efficiency; on-line access across the school and the elimination of the numerous printouts that we relied on previously. The trial was so successful that the decision was made to fully implement RISC from the beginning of Term 4. During the first 8 weeks of this term, more than 500 individual contacts have been recorded in RISC.

Congratulations on producing a great package and I look forward to future upgrades."

Killarney Heights High School said:

"We use the RISC Program for quite a few things. This way it is recorded in the one place when a student record update is needed. We record all welfare data except absences which are recorded on the OASIS Program. We generate progress reports for different areas, eg. HSC, Preliminary, SC and Junior. We generate quality letters for student who have achieved good work and good deeds. We generate Achievement Certificates for various good deeds and good work. This year I have attempted to record everything for the one year without doing an archive in the middle of the year, and the program has coped with it. I hope that this little bit of information has been of some use to you."

Tamworth High School said:

"The RISC package at Tamworth High School has been used now for a period of 4 years to track students successfully through both a discipline system and an award system. Initially we used it only for tracking of students who had been placed on level cards as they moved through the system. This worked very successfully after some minor teething problems adapting the package to the school network but, even with upgrades of both the network and the package, we continue to get high quality and up to date information almost instantly.

We have over the past couple of years extended the package into all Key Learning Areas and into the Welfare area and so its use has also been adapted to cover a wide range of reporting needs on students including those students who have been placed onto Individual Literacy Plans.

We have also modified a whole series of letters now as pro-formas and are getting quite adept at getting the letters out of the system quickly. The new spelling check on the last upgrade is working successfully and preventing frustration when errors are found in the fields in the pro forma letters.

We have found it essential to keep updating our records from OASIS with continual student movement throughout the year and this is now working very successfully for us. We are updating about once a fortnight now and would recommend this to all other users. We continue to be very happy with the package and look forward to further updates that will be able to assist us to use the package even more successfully."

Cobar High School said:

"RISC has been a really helpful tool - I am not a computer "buff" in the sense that I enjoy using them for the sake of it -I like to use them when they do a better job than conventional methods and RISC has certainly achieved that.

We originally wanted to network the system but were unable to because of OASIS not being compatible with Windows 95. If there are any shortcomings with the system it is always OASIS which is slow, cumbersome and user hostile - RISC, is fast, easy to use and user friendly. The product support has been excellent.

We have RISC set up on three separate stand alone computers:

1. As D.P. I have over 20 form letters set up for all of the communications I have with parents. This saves me an enormous amount of time. These range from a general letter of concern which allows any matter to be inserted into the contact field to letters regarding smoking, short and long suspension, placement on behaviour monitoring sheet and letters commending students for improved behaviour. When a student comes to the office, I can quickly review their record by doing a search and if I have for example previously spoken to a student about a particular matter and told them that I will take a certain action if it happens again I am able to remind them of the date and time when I last spoke to them and then proceed to do what I had previously promised to do. When the Principal and I are reviewing a student's record of behaviour (e.g. when we are considering a suspension) or when there is a query from a Year Adviser or parent I can do a print out of the contacts which makes a review of the overall picture very simple.

2. We have overhauled all of our procedures for monitoring attendance. The clerical assistant who enters attendance (on OASIS) uses RISC to generate reminder notes for students who have unexplained absences after 3 days and letters for parents if the absence is still unexplained after 7 days. The clerical assistant working in this area learned how to use RISC very quickly and finds the system invaluable.

3. The main office has RISC set up to generate all letters sent home with respect to failure to fulfill course requirements, failure to submit Assessment tasks and other general letters sent to parents. The clerical assistant using this system has only been using it for a week and is already able to use it without any problems."

Glen Innes High School said:

"We have moved into Stage 3 of our Network growth at school and now have RISC operating in all the staffrooms as well as the Admin area where it started originally. I have put RISC onto the desktop of all my Head Teachers, Year Advisers and Teachers in Charge...about 20 or so staff at the moment.

I adapted our existing documentation to fit the RISC framework and now these users can enter the contacts and print out the necessary letter from their own offices. It is saving a great deal of time and is producing some very professional looking letters home, in addition to maintaining an ongoing record of contacts for a student which proves very useful at interview time.

Our previous letters (pre RISC) were proformas that had hand written insertions so this system is much better. There's been a bit of staff training (by me) but generally it's been picked up very quickly and we now look to RISC to record all sorts of things in the school.

I'm just about to develop a contact letter that prints a student's name onto our pre-printed Merit Award Certificates. The contact keeps a record of the student achieving the appropriate level and the date, and all I have to do then is have a form letter that prints the student's name in the correct spot on the certificate."

Balmain High School said:

"I have used RISC for 3 years at Belmore Boys HS and introduced it to Balmain HS. It works very well, once you have set your fields as you want them for your school needs. The rapid responses to suggestions for improvements to the product have been outstanding from the Marillion team. It gets better each time as users needs are included in the upgrades. The web site has been a great addition as well. Keep improving a great product."

Kandos High School said:

"I can say that your software brings an element of consistency to the system (previously lacking), in a very uncomplicated way (previously unheard of)."

The Register of Individual Student Contact (RISC) is developed & distributed
by Marillion Designs.

Copyright © 1995-2012 Marillion Designs. All rights reserved.
Information in this document is subject to change without notice.
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