CFO

ROSS CARDIFF

Chief Financial Officer

One of the bigger changes at TSS over the past few years has been the advancements in our Information Technology. In the basement of the new Sheil Building on the senior campus you will find the IT department. Led by Mr Richard Humphreys, the team includes three other staff, Mr Brent Buckley, (Systems Administrator) Mr Peter Smith and Mr Stephen Robinson (IT Support for Senior and Junior).

Our Information Technology involves a number of facets. In Sheil we have a large server room that hosts the various applications the School runs, along with massive amounts of data storage. Have a talk to any boy at TSS and they will tell you of the various programs we run. In addition to this we have our “Learning at TSS” systems, which include Moodle in Senior and Edukite at Prep. These are our primary tools for curriculum resources for teachers and boys. In addition we have developed the “My TSS” portals for parent, students and staff. These Portals are our main communication tools and repository of all the IT resources required to operate at TSS. We run a core operating system, TASS, and from the outside you would see the Parent Lounge and Student Café, both components of TASS. This system covers all aspects of the School from payroll for the staff to student records and co-curricular information. A veritable one-stop shop for all our information.

Besides our servers we have much physical infrastructure. The School operates a wideband wireless network. Most of our staff and students have at least two devices and often more. So we can have upwards of 3000 devices logged on to our wireless network at any one time. If you wander through the School and look up you will see our extensive network of wireless points. It is literally everywhere and is designed to operate large volumes of devices at high speed.

TSS IT DEPARTMENT - SENIOR CAMPUS RICHARD HUMPHREYS, BRENT BUCKLEY AND PETER SMITH.

The introduction of the BYOD or Bring Your Own Device occurred a few years ago. For this to work an extensive infrastructure needed to be in place. This has included upgrading of our fibre network to allow a large capacity of data to be quickly utilised at any time. The BYOD program also involves sophisticated tools and systems to ensure no matter what device you have it is able to operate within TSS. This is the true test of a BYOD program and this works extremely well here at TSS. One of the benchmarks we have at the School is downtime for our IT system. If you ask our staff or students they would not be able to remember the last time our system was down. It literally does not occur.

So next time you log on at TSS, or on to one of our portals, or our app, have a think about the hard-working team behind our IT. You don’t see them too much, but they ensure all things IT run day in day out. Well done, gentlemen! The graduating class of 2015 has seen many changes over the past several years. Besides IT, we have undertaken a large number of building projects. This year we finished off the Cribb Extension for our Preschool Boys, and on the senior campus this group of boys has seen the campus transformed during their senior years. We have demolished and rebuilt the Bennett and Sheil buildings, along with the Grandstand, Old Gym Café, Rowing Shed and much more. For the Boarders we have continued to refurbish the Boarding Houses and this year the bathrooms across the various Houses were upgraded. This Christmas will see McKinley House refurbished as well.

The facilities at TSS are truly worldclass and I am sure the graduating class of 2015 has benefited greatly from this work. Next year we continue with our development with roadworks at Prep along with a long-needed new Hall. On the Senior Campus we are aiming to build a Lecture Theatre and refurbish the Library. A busy time.

2015 sees the School with its strongestever enrolment. From Preschool to Year 12 we averaged 1,510 students throughout the year, with 300 Boarders included in this number.

On behalf of the Corporate Staff, I wish the Graduating Class of 2015 all the best for the future and congratulate them on an outstanding year.