Release v25.0

• In order to utilise the new AI Lesson Plan generator, you must provide an OpenAI or Azure OpenAI endpoint and be running GPT-4o, GPT-4o Mini, or a later version.
• We’ve added support for new GPT engines, including GPT-4.1 and GPT-4.1 Mini. We've removed GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, and all customers who previously used GPT-3.5 or GPT-4 have been upgraded to GPT-4.1 Mini for improved price and performance.  
• As part of the upgrade, we’ve added a new field, ‘Current Location,’ to student profiles. Please review its visibility settings to ensure you’re comfortable with who can view the student’s current location.
• By default, a timetable/daily org import is now scheduled for 8:30 AM. Please review this setting to ensure it aligns with your expected timetable availability and does not conflict with your existing full import schedule.
• For customers using the ISAMS API, make sure to provide REST API credentials to receive high-quality portrait photos. You can set these credentials on the School Data Import home screen.
• In order to utilise the pastoral expiries, you must review the default expiry period for each pastoral type and sub-type. Once you have set the expiry period, you can apply an expiry date to all historical records, ensuring that items created beyond the expiry period are archived.
• To enable help text for pastoral types, review all your types and sub-types, and ensure you set up the appropriate explanation text to display when teachers are adding records of that type.
• If you wish to sync confidential pastoral attachments to Synergetic, you must configure a secure document classification in Synergetic. Then, you can set this classification on the Pastoral Types List screen for confidential documents.
• All self-issued JWTs now contain a JTI, which is required to improve JWT security.

Relevant to: Teachers, Academic Coordinators.
Plans: Schoolbox Learning Essentials + Enhanced

Planning lessons just got easier with Schoolbox! The new AI Lesson Plan Generator helps you quickly create structured, engaging lesson plans with just a few inputs, customise them to fit your teaching style, and ensure they align with your curriculum. Simply provide the topic, learning objectives, and key details, and the AI will generate a well-organised lesson plan tailored to your needs.

Key Features & Benefits:

• Saves Time – Instantly generates lesson plans, freeing up your time to focus on teaching, engaging with students, and other classroom priorities.
• Keeps Lessons Structured – Utilise best practice planning templates to ensure consistent, structured layouts. 
• Improves plan quality – Ensures plans are clearly documented with all the required information to support the delivery of classroom learning.
• Encourages creativity – Provides fresh ideas for curriculum delivery and supports engagement and innovation in your teaching.
• Teacher Voice – Easily adjust AI-generated plans to match your teaching style and classroom needs.
• Supports Diverse Subjects – Works for a wide range of topics, subjects, and learning levels. Leveraging existing unit plans and curriculum mapping to ensure appropriate context.
  
  By making lesson planning faster, smarter, and more structured, our new AI Lesson Plan Generator helps school staff focus on what really matters—delivering high-quality education to students.

Superusers will need to ensure that Lesson Plans and AI are set up in their system. For further information, see our help pages on:
- Set up the AI Lesson Plan Generator (for Superusers) 
- Create a Lesson Plan on a Unit Page (for school staff)
- Create or modify a Lesson Plan on a Class Page (for school staff)

Relevant to: Superusers, Teachers, Pastoral Coordinators.
Plans: Schoolbox Learning Enhanced + Schoolbox Community Elite

We’ve introduced the new Pastoral Care Archive feature, where you can now set a default expiry period for pastoral care records based on the type of record. When a record reaches its expiry date, it will automatically move to an archived state.
This feature helps you view only the most relevant and current information related to a student, while still maintaining a long-term archive for data retention purposes.

Key Features & Benefits:

• Configurable Expiry Settings – Schools can define how long each type of pastoral care record should be retained before it expires by default. In addition, this value can be overridden on a per record basis.
• Improved Relevancy – Reduces clutter in the system by automatically archiving expired records, keeping only relevant and active information accessible.
• Dynamic Pastoral Flags – Each pastoral flag type can now have its own rolling expiry. Ensuring only active records are counted and displayed as flags. 
• Retrospective Application – To ensure historical records feature the correct expiry, we have provided the ability to apply expiry dates retroactively by record type.
  
  This feature ensures that issues or notes that are no longer relevant to the care of a student are automatically archived, but remain accessible with a click of a button. This helps avoid information overload and focuses teachers and parents on only active and relevant information. 

For further information, see our help pages on: 
- Manage Pastoral records for school (see Step 5)
- Create a Pastoral Care record for a student (see Step 6)
- View expired/archived Pastoral Care records in a student's profile page
- View expired/archived Pastoral Care records in the Pastoral report page

Relevant to: Teachers, School Administrators, Academic Coordinators.
Plans: Schoolbox Learning Essentials + Enhanced

Our new Independent mark input and output formats feature gives school staff more control over the input of student assessment results. You can now input grades using an alternative mark system to what is displayed to students and parents. For example, a teacher could record a grade as 93%, but display it to students and parents as an A.

This feature helps schools improve mark accuracy, making assessment feedback more accurate while maintaining consistent and relevant output formats for different audiences.

Key Features & Benefits:

• Improve accuracy – Ensure data analytics and mark summation accuracy is maintained.
• Simplify grading – Give students and parents clear, relevant feedback while keeping certain details private for staff.
• Support reporting policies – Align marking systems with your school’s grading and reporting guidelines.
  
  This feature enables teachers to capture highly accurate raw mark data while providing students and parents with a simplified result. Ensuring that your data analytics, ranking, or weighted summation formulas provide the most accurate picture of student attainment.  

For further information, see our help page on:
- Create or edit Due Work on a Unit page (using the Course Builder component) (see steps 20 and 21)
- Create or edit a Due Work Item on a Class page (using the Course Outline component) (see steps 20 and 21)
- Create or edit Due Work from the Unit Planner (see steps 6.r and 6.s)
- Using the Class Markbook (see ‘Show Display Marks’)
- Using the Course Markbook (see ‘Show Display Marks’)

Relevant to: Teachers, Academic Coordinators.
Plans: Schoolbox Learning Essentials + Enhanced

The new Rich Text Assessment Feedback feature allows teachers to format comments with ‘rich text’ rather than just text, making student feedback clearer, more structured, and easier to read.

Key Features & Benefits:

• Enhanced formatting – Richer feedback with images, bullet points, and hyperlinks.
• Advanced Notation – Include formulas, superscripts, and subscripts for more complex feedback.
• AI Assistance – Use the built-in AI assistant to help draft or improve feedback. 

For further information, see our help pages on:
- Download Student Submissions (see Note in Step 3)
- Use the Quickmark screen
- Publish Draft Marks and Feedback

Relevant to: Superusers, School Administrators, IT Staff, Event Coordinators.
Plans: All

Importing events and schedules into your school calendar just got easier with our New Calendar Import Workflow feature. Now, you can quickly upload and organise calendar data from external sources, saving time and reducing errors.

Key Features & Benefits:

• Easy import process – Upload calendar events for roles, campus, and groups in just a few simple steps.
• Supports multiple formats – Import calendar data from various file types, like CSV or ICS, without hassle.
• Reduce errors – Includes a log and review step to help you see exactly what will be imported, reducing the risk of errors.
• Saves time – Quickly populate your calendar without the need for manual entry.
  
  We’ve made calendar management faster, more accurate, and less stressful for your admin team so everyone can stay on top of their schedules with ease. 

For further information, see our help page on Managing the School Calendar.

For Superusers:

• Admin:
  We’ve added:
  • The ability to bulk reset notifications, allowing you to quickly deploy changes to notification preferences for multiple users at once. This overrides your user's preferences with the new defaults to ensure alignment with school policy. See the help page for details.
  • The ability to pause device notifications overnight, ensuring that non-critical alerts do not disturb people during the night. Notifications will automatically be stored safely and then delivered in the morning when they can be actioned. See the help page for details.
  • The GeoSnapShot photo search integration that lets you find and organise photos based on Schoolbox profile pictures for both staff and students. This allows for quick lookup of images containing a specific staff member or student by matching faces using facial recognition. See the help page for details.
  • The ability to review all service permissions via the permissions report. See what level and specific modifications each user has been granted. See the help page for details.
  • A new ‘Current Location’ field in the Profile Editor to allow staff to easily locate where a student is currently located based on the student's timetable via the student's profile. See the help page, and also see additional exceptions for the 'Current Location' field in help page.
  • The ability to easily impersonate users directly from their profile page, if permitted. This allows more direct access to user impersonation and ensures that those without admin access, but with impersonation rights, can find the function. See the help page for details.
  • A new security audit report (Impersonation Log) that tracks user impersonation activity—showing who was impersonated, when it occurred, and which user performed the impersonation. See the help page for details.
  • Enhancements to the restore tool to support recovery of a wider range of recently deleted objects—including users, files, courses, and units—allowing selection of longer time ranges, and enabling restoration of items deleted up to 3 months prior. See the help page for details.
  • A new update for the vCal terminology to iCalendar to represent the modern standards that are supported when working with ICS files to either subscribe to or import calendars. See the help page for details.
  • The ability to control whether alert messages on the profile screen are displayed upfront or hidden behind a 'View More' link. See the help page (step 5.c.iii) for details.
  • A new update to the AI config screen to hide Azure settings when you're not using the Azure endpoint. See the help page for details.
  • The ability to enable birthday celebrations for students. This feature can be turned on for specific year levels through the Year Level admin screen. See the help page for details.
     
• LMS:
  We’ve added:  
  • An enhancement on the Summative report, where you may now enable a new visualisation designed to display Curriculum Progressions. This report shows a student's progression against a learning area over multiple semesters. It is a common reporting format for Victoria. See the help page (steps 14 and 19) for details, and also see the help page for instructions on how to enable this feature.
  • The ability to configure the summative report box plot to only render assessments of certain work types, allowing you to exclude work types that are not appropriate to be compared against the cohort. See the help page (steps 11, 12, 15, and 17) for details.
  • The ability to import feedback in bulk, allowing you to provide feedback for assessments, assignments, or any other evaluation type in a single action, saving time, improving consistency, and streamlining the feedback process across assessments and assignments. See the help page for details.
  • The ability to include a custom footer in the Summative Report, which can contain the report title and student details. See the help page (step 7) for details.
     
• Pastoral:
  We’ve added:
  • The ability to disable pastoral points from being set on pastoral records. See for details the:
    • help page (steps 14 and 15)
    • help page (see Step 6) 
    • help page (see Step 3)
    • help page (see Step 5)
  • The ability to set default pastoral points per type and sub-type. See the help page (steps 14 and 15) and the help page (see Step 6) for details.
  • The ability to add Pastoral Entry Tips as helpful on-screen prompts while you add pastoral records, guiding staff to include relevant details, avoid common mistakes, and follow best practices. See the help page (Step 10) for details. 
  • The ability to set up Synergetic synchronisation to include confidential pastoral attachments. In order to utilise this feature, you must set up a confidential document classification in Synergetic and define the classification on the pastoral type.
     
• SIS Connectors:
  We’ve added:
  • The ability to run user, timetable, and calendar imports manually and independently. This allows faster and quicker updates to data when required. See the help page for details.
  • The ability to schedule timetable imports to run at a specific time each day, so they align with daily organisation uploads in the morning.
  • ISAMS API: The ability for the connector to import students' ‘Boarding Status’ and ‘Boarding House Code’.
  • ISAMS API: An improved ability for the connector to import portrait photos rather than using the bulk API, which provided thumbnails. We now utilise the REST API to get a full-size portrait image. In order to use this feature, you must provide REST API credentials. See the help page for details.
  • Sentral: The ability for the connector to import student and staff photos.
  • Sentral: The ability for the connector to import staff houses.
  • Veracross: The ability to display a deep link to the attendance marking screen from the timetable.
  • Wonde: The ability to enable Wonde to include future families in the UPS, so both current and future parents and students can be provisioned.
  • TASS API: A campus field for staff via the TASS API, allowing you to access staff campus information. See the help page for details.
  • All: The ability to automatically shorten class codes that exceed 64 characters, helping prevent errors when loading class pages. Please be aware of this limitation when loading class pages. See the help page for details.

For School Staff:

• Core:
  We’ve added:
  • An improvement to rename the side menu element ‘My Subjects’ to ‘My Classes’ to ensure consistency.
     
• LMS:
  We’ve added:
  • The ability for the folder component to display folders in the sequence defined by the course. See for details the:
    • help page
    • help page
  • A link to ‘View and Grade submissions’ directly from the course outline and due work components, allowing teachers to jump straight into providing feedback using the inline grader. See the help page (see the Note in step 4) for details.
  • An extended functionality to the Course Markbook, which allows for quick action, such as excluding a student from the activity and viewing attempts, making it easier to manage changes across the entire course. Teachers need write access to the course and classes to make these changes. See the details in the:
    • help page
    • help page (see the Note)
  • The new curriculum picker panel which provides a recommended curriculum based on the unit linked to the activity you're creating.
     
• Homepages:
  We’ve added:
  • The ability to set the height of the GeoSnapShot component, allowing larger galleries to be displayed without a scrollbar. See the help page for details.
  • The ability to filter the GeoSnapShot component by specific image gallery albums, so you can filter to display only the most relevant images. See the help page for details.
  • An enhancement to the homepage news component layout to be more in line with the dashboard news feed, ensuring consistent image dimensions are used by both.

This release brings a few minor updates to the Online Learning Course, with refreshed videos and tasks designed to leverage the innovative v25.0 Schoolbox features.

Updated Videos:

Additionally, we've made minor tweaks to instructions within the Superuser unit, to ensure the latest features in the Administration area are reflected.

Don't have the OLC? Speak to your School Engagement Manager to add the Online Learning Course (OLC) to your account.

NOTE: These updates will not affect already completed/self-assessed Tasks, nor prior eligibility for OLC '25 Badges.