About British School Manila

Located in Manila, the Philippines, British School Manila (BSM) established in 1976, is the oldest and only non-profit international school in Manila offering a British education for students from Nursery (age 3) up to Year 13 (age 18). BSM have small class sizes with a holistic approach, ensuring students achieve more than they ever thought possible.

Why OpenApply

BSM began using OpenApply in May 2022. Senior Manager Scott Justice explains, “Our Admissions process didn’t offer a great experience when applying, as everything was paper-based and not very efficient.” The school was looking for an Admissions platform to help showcase their school comprehensively. Donna Caballo, Admissions Manager, adds, “We needed a system that would give us more time to interact and engage with our prospective families and students.”

Additionally, the school required a solution that was customisable and compatible with their student information system. Scott reflects, “The user interface and experience for families felt very professional and polished, which was important for us. We required an excellent reporting feature, and loved the real-time reporting.”

The Admissions team at BSM spent a considerable amount of time reviewing other systems, but ultimately chose OpenApply because of its flexibility to adapt to different schools and meet their unique requirements.” Donna adds, “Our primary and senior schools follow slightly different processes and OpenApply helped our staff in not needing to change their ways.” Ultimately, after thoroughly reviewing other potential systems, BSM was impressed with OpenApply.

Implementation

Since OpenApply’s implementation, BSM has taken advantage of a wide array of features, from enrolment management to reporting. Scott gives credit to Senior Customer Success Manager Tom Kirby with regard to his instrumental role in helping the school transfer their paper-based systems seamlessly into OpenApply, which was also very well received by the academic team.

Scott and Donna point out how they felt supported throughout the whole implementation process. “Your customer success and support team were helpful and quick to reply to our queries any time of day considering the time difference”, they echo.

OpenApply in Action

When asked about the BSM team’s favourite feature, Scott remarks, “By far it’s the re-enrolment feature. It’s such a simple process for parents! We send them an email with a link which logs them straight in with no need for them to remember passwords.” Donna is in agreement but also has high praise for OpenApply’s review mode. She mentions using it daily due to the ease of notifying different departments to submit feedback.

Moving forward, BSM is working with OpenApply to develop the ability to incorporate digital signatures in letters, and is considering asking parents to fill in details such as medical information and consent, especially with families becoming increasingly familiar with the system. Donna adds, ‘We would now like our finance team to be able to access OpenApply for their billing statements, so everyone is using just the one system.”

The End Result

The team at BSM appreciates having more time to engage and connect with families and students due to the automation and streamlining of their processes. Scott explains that it makes the team’s work more valuable as OpenApply does the heavy lifting, such as sending routine emails, acknowledgements and reminders, while freeing up time. Meanwhile, Donna values the centralised and chronological communication within OpenApply, which includes an audit trail for easy reference.

When asked about the impact on families, Scott explains, “After two months, we were very happy with the new system, especially with the smooth re-enrolment feature that was far more slick and easy for families to perform super quickly. Within one week we had 88% of families that had re-enrolled and after two weeks they were at 93%!”

Lastly, when asked if the school would recommend OpenApply, Scott states, “Yes, you guys are ahead of the curve!”