As alumni of the Melbourne Accelerator Program, Dave Philp and Joshua Turci found Melbourne Connect to be the perfect location to base their EdTech company, Intellischool.
After taking up residency in Melbourne Connect in mid-2022, the team has now settled in and made the precinct their home. We caught up with Joe Salvati, Head of Growth at Intellischool, to gain insight into the company and how they are making strides to disrupt the education sector in all the right ways.
1. Could you tell us who the team is behind Intellischool?
Intellischool was founded by Dave Philp and Josh Turci. So Dave worked in schools for 10 to 15 years as I.T. lead and was also consulting over 70 independent schools in Australia at the time. So this is the result of Dave trying to solve a problem that he had during that time. He really hated having to click out of a system and hated having data all over the place, and he saw that there's all this information that could be at the fingertips of schools and help them solve some problems.
So with that experience, he pivoted from building a student information system to the creation of Intellischool, and we were born. So Intellischool went through the Melbourne Accelerator Program a few years ago, and with that, we were able to secure some funding back in August. At the moment we operating in Australia and New Zealand and we are heading off to the UK in a few weeks to expand there, and we're also doing some work in Southeast Asia as well.
2. Could you tell us what the mission of Intellischool is and how the software works?
Intellischool is a software that focuses on data analytics for schools. And what we really want to do is empower schools to use all the data at their fingertips to be proactive and to create change that will help students grow and thrive. With that, we look to take the data that's in a whole bunch of different systems: their grades; their standardised testing; attendance levels, etc. and allow it all to come into one place so you can get a view over time of individual student cohorts per year level or school.
Following that initial implementation, we want to go a step further. As opposed to being reactive or spending time with the data, we can create pulse alerts or be proactive — so for example, you can decide to be notified when a certain event happens. We're allowing teachers to take that data and have it be actionable as opposed to spending their time figuring out what to do next.
2. Why did Dave and Josh feel that there was a need for a company like Intellischool in the education space?
Intellischool was needed in the market because schools are time-poor. There is information all over the place and there needs to be a way to allow schools to keep up with technology and use what businesses in the commercial world are using to their advantage to help students grow and create the next generation of adults.
There is really a need to help schools take advantage of the tools that are at their fingertips in the commercial world. With data in many systems, often all over the place, they can't make decisions. Being able to help schools make those decisions and be proactive in helping students who may be slipping is really a need not just in Australia but around the world. What we found in our conversations is that there really is a great hunger for it. After our initial conversations with customers, it's as though a light box switches on, and they are really excited to engage with us.
