Over the past decade, the number of students attending private schools has grown by more than 22 per cent¹. It is estimated that more than 30 per cent of NSW students now attend non-government schools¹.

As a consequence, schools are looking for ways to help parents manage the related financial obligations, such as tuition payments.

One option is BPAY. Its 2007 Usage & Attitudes study reported that 10 per cent of Australian bill payers made a school fee payment in the last month.

According to BPAY General Manager Andrew Arnott, the electronic bill payment service has proven attractive to both schools and parents because it offers a high degree of control.

"For schools, BPAY simplifies the reconciliation process, saving time and money. And parents have the flexibility to structure fee payments that can be made 24/7 from anywhere in the world," says Arnott.

One example of a successful BPAY roll-out is the Catholic Education Office (CEO) of the Archdiocese of Sydney.

The CEO is responsible for the leadership, efficient operation and management of the schools that educate almost 63,000 students in parish primary and regional secondary schools in the Archdiocese of Sydney.

Part of its role is to administer and process the collection of school fees on behalf of its 147 schools.

"We wanted to introduce BPAY for many years, however, we were unable to do so because of constraints with our existing software package, which had not been upgraded since 1989," said Terry Keogh, Director of Financial Services, Catholic Education Office Sydney.

"Once our new software package, SAS from Human Edge, was installed in 2004, we contacted the Catholic Development Fund (CDF) to determine how to implement BPAY in a way that would best service both the parents paying the school fees, as well as the individual schools receiving them."

All of the schools bank with the CDF, which accesses BPAY facilities through the Commonwealth Bank. The CDF accepts funds on deposit for schools, and operates within strict prudential guidelines and accounts.

In collaboration with the CDF, the CEO developed a system whereby its fee payers have an eleven digit account number that doubles as the BPAY reference number. The first five digits identify the diocese and school to which the fees are being paid, and the remaining digits identify the individual payer.

"In March 2005, we began trialing BPAY in six schools," said Mr Keogh. "From this limited successful trial, BPAY, in conjunction with the SAS rollout, was expanded to another 96 schools in 2005, and by June 2006 all of our schools were able to offer BPAY facilities."

For the CEO, the benefits of BPAY address the needs of all key stakeholders.

The individual schools:

• A streamlined bill collection process that allows each individual school to log into its BPAY transaction account to print out a list of payments from the previous day and receipt them according to their account number.
• The increase in BPAY has resulted in a significant decrease in cash receipts, reducing school risks and streamlining the bank deposit process.
• The receipt number that is automatically generated with each BPAY transaction serves as proof of payment, so the schools do not need to prepare and print a school receipt for the parents, saving time and paper.
• BPAY transactions are less expensive than EFTPOS transactions since BPAY does not require the purchase or hire of any additional equipment.

The parents:

• Parents have a sense of control, giving them the option of paying their fees 24 hours a day, seven days a week ? whenever it is convenient.
• BPAY allows parents to structure their fee payments on regular schedule, for instance weekly, fortnightly or monthly, spreading their financial commitments throughout the entire year.
• BPAY has also reduced the need for parents to go to the school and wait in a queue to pay fees.

"When parents schedule regular BPAY payments throughout the calendar year, they actually begin to pre-pay their fees, giving them a sense of security and confidence," says Mr Keogh.

"Parents are definitely meeting their financial commitments better, and we have observed a reduction in account arrears."

Every day, more and more people are opting to pay their fees via BPAY and in just over a year, this payment option is the preferred method by both parents and schools, accounting for a greater percentage of all school fee payments.

"We plan to develop more of our administration processes online," said Mr Keogh. "As a service to our parents, we will start to automatically upload the BPAY receipts electronically. Administratively, we are creating a daily bank deposit for BPAY that routinely matches up in the bank reconciliation process."

The Catholic Education Office, Sydney was one of the first dioceses in New South Wales to offer the BPAY bill payment option to its schools and their parents.

¹ Australian Bureau of Statistics