FAQ's

Imagine having the ability to oversee, track, monitor, and manage every aspect of student life on your campus with a single tool. Imagine the peace of mind for the administrators, the staff, the parents, and the students at your school/camp 

Reach is the award-winning, secure, purpose-built, subscription-based student life management system developed specifically for schools and residential campuses. 

Reach is a constantly evolving suite of integrated, task-specific modules designed to add efficiencies, real-time automation, and lend a helping hand for the day-to-day challenges of administrators and staff at your school.

Manage non-academic student life for student safety and peace of mind for your school or camp.

• Boarding Schools – Reach Boarding System
• Day Schools – Reach Student Life
• Camps – Reach Camp Director
• Higher Education
• Wellness

1. Regional, Responsive, and Concierge-Level Support
2. Experienced Team Members with an Educational Pedigree
3. Speed of Product Development, Reach is innovative and dynamic!
4. Purpose Built Features for Day and Boarding Schools, Camps and Higher Education 5. Global Partnerships with Institutions and People

If you are going to invest in a tool to provide you with efficiency and control benefits it makes sense that it covers as many aspects of your daily operations as possible.

Reach provides 15+ powerful modules that help you consolidate your student life activities into one single system. Running separate systems for different boarding functions can fracture your record keeping procedures and create additional work for you to maintain data and reports from multiple recording systems.

Reducing your paperwork and gaining operational efficiency is only one of the benefits of automation. The other great benefit of automating your business processes is data capture. The pay-off from data capture is an ability to recover data rapidly to produce quality reports.

Reach provides a flexible reporting module which allows you to tap into the vast collection of data that is generated from your daily transactions. It enables you to produce a wide range of reports which can provide you with tremendous insight into your school/camp and play a vital role in your management and continuous improvement programs.

REACH provides a secure, efficient and accurate transactional record keeping system with rapid and flexible data recovery for reporting purposes.

What happens in times when you cannot connect? Even when you are on -campus there will be times when your school’s systems are unavailable, wifi access is limited or unavailable. Or perhaps you are taking a student group on an excursion to a remote location.

Reach gives you the ability to complete transactions off-line. You can do what you need on Reach when you cannot connect and your device will automatically sync with the database when you are able to reconnect again.

Every School is different so it is important for you to be able to customize and configure the settings and workflows to suit your specific needs.

Reach provides you with the flexibility to configure your system to fit in with your school. You can set your own protocols and processes to suit your specific workflows. This makes implementation easier and ensures that there is minimal disruption for your staff, student and parent communities.

The world is mobile and so are your staff, students and parents. The ideal system will match with your mobility requirements. Gone are the days where your software needs you to be sitting at a desk to operate it.

Reach provides users with multi-device operation (PC tablet, smartphone) and multi-platform functionality (iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry, etc).

Be mindful that your largest user population will be your parent community and they use a wide range of device platforms. Without their engagement then any system will be compromised, so look for systems that provide broad coverage across all operating platforms so you can accommodate the broadest possible population of users.

REACH is able to integrate with your existing school protocols and provide a single-sign-on capability. This means your staff, parents and students can use their existing school login/password details. This simplifies the management of your system for both users and administrators.

The most common help request for practically all software with large user populations is for username and passwords. Keeping them aligned with your school sign-on details will ensure that parent and student user help requests are reduced to a minimum.

Reach needs a network connection for any off campus transactions.  For on campus, we have RFID bracelets and fobs that can be used to check in/out of on campus locations.

We are rolling out our new Emergency Management System in Q1 of 2023 and we have baked this feature into the system, identifying the GPS location of a student during an emergency on/off campus.

Not at all! SS utilizes one app and differentiates based on the login.

We have designed the Reach user-access security system as a robust and flexible digital architecture that provides administrators with complete control across the entire user base.

Our Infinity Access Control provides administrators with unlimited flexibility and endless possibilities. It gives you the ability to control the access and activity capability for every user, on every screen, and for every action in Reach.

Using the latest in RFID technology, biometrics, or GPS to monitor student movement, Reach implements new innovative technology tools such as i-Beacons, NFC tags and QR codes. Reach is constantly seeking to improve user experience, efficiency, and security for our schools.

Reach has a direct integration with your instance of School Management System or Student Information System, so by API, we connect to your data and securely sync information on a daily basis. Reach is predominantly pulling demographic information of student and parent, as the system helps schools manage the leave process and emailing of parents. Information such as Dorm/Boarding House, Grade/Year Group, Gender, Room, etc… are also pulled through the API.

Data upload occurs using the API of your School Management System or Student Information System integration. Reach has built over 30 integrations with partners around the world. The sync occurs usually at 2am each day, updating only records that have been changed.

Reach used the Google Cloud Platform to host your data. We have company wide policies and restrictions about who can access your data and this data does not leave your country. There are redundant data centers setup throughout the world and we use various industry standard protocols and encryption to store and protect your information.

Reach does not retain user data once our relationship is severed. We supply you with a file of all transactions which you can export and utilize should you need to. 

For some schools there may also be internal school policies that regulate and limit the storage of student’s personal data to on-campus, school managed servers only.

Reach offers schools the option of Cloud hosting or self-hosted environments. If your IT Department or school has on-campus data storage requirements then a Cloud based system will not be suitable for your school.

Reach has numerous training resources to get new staff up and running. With support teams and developers in Canada, United States, Australia, and England, help is never far away.

You can find support information, videos, tutorials and important setup information at support.reach.cloud. From here, you can:

• Launch support tickets 
• Chat with our support team
• Find articles to a challenge
• Submit a suggestion

• Real-Time Direct Messaging within your community (Reach: Now)
• “Staff Room” Access to a Community of Experts in Residence Life from around the world providing excellent support.
• Deep Integrations with School SIS/LMS/EMAR Platforms
• Utilizing NFC, QR Code, and Biometric Technologies to understand student movements and check-ins
• Front Desk – Visitor Management System
• Reach Emergency, a complete suite of tools for when situations develop

This comprehensive, self-paced, virtual training program guides your team through all you need to know about our top 8 modules, used by schools around the globe!

SISO and Location Changes, Live Rollcall, Leave Management, Communications, Dispensing Medications, Pastoral Notes and Duty Reports 

10-20 minutes per course depending on user experience

Official Reach certification badge to display on LinkedIn upon completion!

All telephone and online support calls are included as part of the ReachBoarding subscription.

Staff Training is included as part of the initial setup cost and is carried out on a “train the trainer” basis via online webinar sessions. If on-site training is required, this can be supplied at the standard day rate however this may attract transportation and site visit fees.

Reach also provides a comprehensive online user guide and video channel with more than 50 user help videos.

Every school that uses Reach will have gone through a custom roll out plan that is formed from discussions between Reach and the key stakeholders at the school. This roll out plan will cover all areas such as IT, boarding processes, training and parent engagement to make sure that the school requirements are met in the timescales agreed and that the benefits are felt as soon as possible.

Whether your school has a large or small student population, we’re here to help you manage your boarding environment. 

We pride ourselves on investing the time to learn about your school so we can understand your unique requirements and determine the best plan for your school. 

Reach Boarding is provided on an annual subscription per-student/camper basis. 

Your fee is based on your student/camper population and will be reviewed each year based on student numbers.

We always work with an approx number of students and we are flexible in that regard, we know schools have some kids leaving during the school year or some kids registering late, so we do not really adjust the invoice during the school year unless there is a huge change (+/- 20 students) in the numbers. Every year, we ask schools to give us an update on the enrollment and we issue the invoice accordingly.

• Wellness Information
• Risk Management
• Data Security
• Custom Reporting
• Dynamic Choices
• Seamless Integration
• Personalized Onboarding
• One App for all users
• Support + Training
• Single Data Storage

Product Training & Support

• All phone and online support calls are included as part of your Reach subscription. 
• Staff Training is included as part your initial setup cost 
• Comprehensive online user guides and videos with more than 50 user help videos.

Data Integration:

The integration will be provided to your school’s Student Information System for the provisioning and synchronization of user accounts into the Reach platform. This will ensure a single master record and reduce administrative overheads of maintaining two separate user databases.

Yes, Data Integration with your Student Information System is an annual fee that Reach applies to the subscription to sync demographic data each day. It is one of the most important facets of the integration, as you will want data in your SIS to be in step with the data you find in Reach.

The connection with Google Workspace will only manage the authentication protocols for SSO and not the sync of demographic data.

95% of schools require absolutely no customization of the Reach platform. We have included this into the Service Level Agreement, just in case you would be interested in customizing a module or a certain aspect in Reach. Otherwise, it is an out of the box solution.

All of your training, support and setup fees are taken care of in the initial setup fee that we charge in Year 1 of the contract. 

We offer on-site training, but most schools do not opt for this and are ok with virtual based training.

Absolutely. Our team can spin up a portal you to play around with and we can load some dummy data in there so you can see Reach in action.

This would be part and parcel and included with the demo site. Not a problem.

At Reach, we are strong believers that partnerships increase expertise and deliver resources to our schools, confirming our best practice approach.  We believe that our partners are amongst the best in the field. To learn more about them CLICK BELOW:

• Challenge Success
• Brooklyn Raney, One Trusted Adult

It is a survey completed by over 310,000 students at over 300 schools, focusing on a wealth of topics including student connection, engagement with learning and mental health

The survey has about 70 questions and takes 30-40 minutes to complete.

Questions/topics include Items on:

• Academic engagement
• Physical and mental health
• Homework and extracurriculars
• Academic worry (Grades and assessment)
• Support and belonging at school
• Beliefs about teacher care
• Stress and ways to alleviate it

By administering a student survey, powered by the Reach App, your school can gather data and insights that lead to actionable changes designed to improve student well-being, belonging, and engagement with learning.

Through the process, anonymized data is collected from user-friendly surveys of students, staff, and parents via the Reach mobile app or via direct email link. 

Experts from Challenge Success will analyze the results of the surveys and through tabulation, will display a dashboard of the results in the Reach App highlighting key response areas and data that will help you understand your community from different vantage points.

Beyond the dashboard in Reach, team members from Challenge Success will provide a one-hour video conference debrief with your team to review the analysis and your school’s results. This debrief will offer expert advice on how to interpret the data, and how best to address any opportunities or concerns highlighted through the discovery process.

Challenge Success partners with schools, families, and communities to embrace a broad definition of success and to implement research-based strategies that promote student well-being and engagement with learning.

What the students are experiencing related to SPACE

Does Student Voice drive your school’s policies and practices?

S: Students Schedule & Use of time

P: Project & Problem-Based learning

A: Alternative & Authentic Assessment

C: Climate of Care

E: Education 

We recommend you administer the CS survey one or two times during the school year (Fall and Spring), it is better to administer during a time that is typical for students at your school, students should not take the survey right before or after exams or during the first few weeks of school.

If you want to send a shorter version of the survey or just monthly check ups, you can do that within Reach at any time.

The survey can be delivered through the Reach App or we could email you a link to a secure website, which you can distribute to your students when they sit for the survey.

We recommend that you encourage all students to participate, we aim for a response rate of at least 70% of the group you have selected to deliver the survey.

If you are a Reach School or not, you can have access to the Challenge Success Survey, we have many options, and we will need to understand your needs before we can give you an accurate quote.

It depends on the question, but we could adjust race/ethnicity to be appropriate for your audience.

• SURVEY: Support administering one online survey
• DASHBOARD: Interactive, online dashboard of results with executive summary
• PEER SCHOOL PROFILE: Access to a dashboard of data from similar schools
• DEBRIEF CALL

Prep4 is an engaging and supportive collection of online resources for students and campers and their caregivers. It includes videos for families to watch together, handouts and tip sheets to download, and a podcast especially for parents.

Prep4 is what all adventurous young people need before and during time away from home to be happy, healthy, and well-adjusted.

Membership to Prep4School and Prep4Camp gives students, campers, and their caregivers instant access to awesome videos, engaging podcasts, and helpful print-outs that teach the keys to social and emotional success. Prep4 is what all adventurous young people need before and during time away from home to be happy, healthy, and well-adjusted.

The Reach story began one Thursday afternoon in October 2012 on a rugby field at Guildford Grammar School in Perth, Western Australia. Steve Montgomery went to assist Michael Holland to coach the Guildford Grammar 1st XV rugby team. Michael was the Head of Boarding for Guildford Grammar at the time.

Michael’s phone kept buzzing every few minutes with boarders trying to organize or confirm their upcoming weekend leave. It was clear that Michael, and likely many other Heads of Boarding across Australia, could benefit from a system that could change the way that schools could fulfill their Duty of Care.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Brian Murray was a Dean of Students and was in search of a system that would help bring efficiency to a very busy boarding program, from taking attendance at meals to processing thousands of requests for leave. Discovering that there were few options for Student Life Management Systems in the eco-system, Brian connected with Touchline Connect’s team and the work that they had started at Guildford Grammar continued as an international collaboration.

The result is what you see today – a suite of comprehensive, multi-featured, and advanced tools, which automate school and residential activities, improve communication, and provide measurable gains for efficiency and risk mitigation.