Every student in your care deserves nothing to be missed.
Activities beyond the timetable governed properly
Orca is the Activity Planning and Compliance Platform for Australian schools.
Every activity, from class excursions to camps, carnivals to concerts, needs proper planning, approvals, risk assessment, and visibility.
Right now, most of that happens across email chains and spreadsheets.
Orca puts it all in one place.
Activity Planning & Compliance Platform for Schools
Live Activity Feed
Live
Yr 10 Snowy Mountains
Approved — Risk assessment complete
Approved
Athletics Carnival Yr 4-6
Pending final approval
In Review
ELC Open Day 2026
Auto-generated & attached
Draft
24
Active
7
In Review
18
Approved
Risk Assessment
Auto-generated PDF
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The Missing Layer
Every activity carries real responsibility for real people
Every week, schools run excursions, camps, carnivals, exams, productions, and dozens of other activities beyond the classroom. Each one carries genuine responsibility: approvals, risk assessments, compliance, and communication that must be done properly. Not just to satisfy a policy, but because students are in your care. Orca brings structure, visibility, and accountability to all of it.
Non-timetabled activity types run by schools:
Excursions & International Trips
Incursions, excursions, international trips, camps with externals, and overnight stays.
Schools don't lose sleep over planning events. They lose sleep over the child whose medical alert wasn't flagged, the approval that got lost in an email chain, the parent who finds out about the excursion from their kid the night before. Orca is built to make sure none of that happens. Because compliance failures aren't just legal problems. They're failures of care.
All in one place
Events, risks, comms & approvals
01 — Centralised & Auditable
One system. Complete visibility.
Events, approvals, risk, communication, and records all in one place. Always visible, always auditable. No more spreadsheets. No more email chains. No more chasing down what happened and who approved it. Every activity in Orca, nothing left outside it. No one is left guessing.
Every event, decision, and approval stored in one accessible, searchable record
Audit-ready at any time. No scrambling when questions are asked
Full school transparency. All staff can see all activities, even those they're not running
Every step tracked
Approval workflows
02 — Structured Approvals
No activity approved without the right sign-off.
Missed approvals are a compliance failure waiting to happen. Orca enforces structured approval workflows so every activity follows the right process, with every step tracked, every approver accountable, and nothing skipped.
Configurable multi-step workflows aligned to your policies
Leaders see every activity's approval status in real time. No chasing required
Approvers can edit details, comment, and assign tasks. No switching between tools
Risk Assessment
Auto-generated from template
Complete
03 — Risk & Compliance
Documented. Assured. Every time.
Behind every missed approval or incomplete risk assessment is a real excursion, a real child, and a real family trusting your school to get it right. Orca removes that risk. Standardised templates, auto-generated risk PDFs, and a complete paper trail mean your school can demonstrate proper process, always.
Template, context and question driven risk assessments. Auto-generated PDFs with version control
Full revision history. Every change recorded, comparable, and restorable
Logs of every key action. Your school is always prepared for scrutiny
When activity management is spread across emails, spreadsheets, and conversations, things get missed. A parent hears about an excursion the night before. A principal doesn’t know an activity is running. A teacher chases approvals. A compliance manager worries about gaps. Orca ends that uncertainty. Everyone sees the full picture.
Comprehensive and well-planned events
Timely notifications and digest emails
Events feed to existing tools with iCal subscriptions
Forms and permissions built in. No lost emails
Less admin
More time for students
05 — Efficiency & Trust
Less admin burden. Stronger community trust.
When governance is systemised, the side effect is clarity. Teachers spend less time on paperwork. Leaders stop chasing status updates. Parents receive clear, consistent communication. Everyone works from the same source of truth.
Duplication eliminated. One record, one process, one source of truth for every activity
Community calendar and parent messaging built-in
A school that runs systematically builds trust with staff, parents, and the board
Quick implementation available. No migration. No disruption.
Orca runs alongside your existing systems, not instead of them. Your SIS, your LMS, your timetabling platform stay exactly as they are. Orca handles what those systems were never designed for: the visibility, planning, and compliance of activities beyond the timetable.
1
Quick setup
Import your users, roles, and cohort data from a spreadsheet. No IT project, no migration, and no disruption to your existing systems.
CSV importDays to set upNo IT project
2
Expand naturally
Start with one activity type: excursions, junior or senior. As staff see approvals, risk assessments, and communications handled automatically, other teams bring their activities into Orca. No commitment to go all-in on day one.
No data to migrateStaff-led adoption available
3
Connect when you're ready
Larger schools can connect Orca to their SSO provider and SIS for automatic user and cohort syncing. This is an efficiency upgrade, not a requirement to get started.
Microsoft Entra IDGoogle WorkspaceStudentNetSIS API
Activity roll marking
Orca includes roll marking for non-timetabled activities (excursions, camps, sport carnivals). This is entirely separate from your SIS curriculum attendance records. It doesn't create a conflict with how your school records day-to-day timetabled attendance.
No data to migrate
Orca is a standalone platform — activity records, risk assessments, and compliance documentation live in Orca and stay in Orca. Because Orca manages non-timetabled activities rather than curriculum or census data, there's nothing to migrate and nothing that touches your student records system. When you need your data out, a full export is available in CSV, Excel, PDF, and more. For deeper integration, a REST API is also available.
Who it's for
When schools run with clarity, everyone feels it
Proper governance isn't just about protecting the school. It's about giving every person connected to it the confidence and visibility they deserve. When activity planning is systematic, controlled, and visible, every part of your school community feels the difference.
30 minutes. We'll walk through exactly how Orca fits your school.
Built-in Capability
Everything your school needs to govern activities properly
Every feature designed around the reality of how schools carry responsibility, from first draft through to post-activity debrief and record-keeping.
Planning & Calendars
Staff Calendar
View all In-Review and Approved events. Staff can see what's tentative, not just live. Calendar or list view with colour-coded status labels.
Community Calendar
Shared calendar for parents, students, and staff. Events marked for the community appear automatically.
Personal Calendar
A personalised calendar showing only the events you're directly involved in — as staff, student, or parent. Pinned events also appear here, giving every user a tailored view of what matters to them.
Comprehensive Events
Full event records — participants, planners, attachments, notes. Single, all-day, multi-day, and complex recurring events with concurrency checking.
Recurring Entries
Occurrences share event details, approvals, and responses. Detach individual occurrences to change details and trigger a separate approval process.
Conflict Checking
Automatically detect scheduling conflicts before they become problems. An alert displays all events that clash with the proposed time.
Approvals & Risk
Approval Workflows
Configurable multi-step workflows — parallel, sequential, or mixed. Trigger conditions, step invalidation, skippable steps, selectable approvers, and full email & notification support throughout the lifecycle.
Digital Risk Assessments
Select a template, answer the questions, and a professional risk assessment PDF is automatically generated from your risk register databank. Consistent, compliant, every time.
Revision History
Full audit trail with side-by-side version comparison and restore. Preview events as a parent or student would see them.
Logs
Every key action is logged. Your school is always prepared for scrutiny. A dedicated admin interface provides filters and deep inspection for auditing any event's full history.
Communication & Visibility
Notifications
Immediate or digest delivery. Alerts for new comments, tasks, approvals, status changes — keeping everyone informed without overwhelming them.
Comments
All planning conversations right within the event record. Approvers, staff in charge, and planners notified automatically via email and in-system.
Messaging
Send targeted messages via email to staff, parents, or students of an activity directly from within the platform — no external tools required.
Student Alerts
Global alerts appear across all activities. Add per-event and per-day attendance alerts so that key information is surfaced at exactly the right moment.
Forms & Permissions
Enable responses from parents, staff, and students. Yes/no, free text, and file upload. Define open/close dates, set capacity, and track in colour-coded lists.
Search
Find events quickly by name and staff. Filter by type, status, campus, category — nothing is ever hard to find.
People & Participation
Staff List & Roles
Assign Staff in Charge, 2IC, Planner, and Attendee roles. Add by individual or cohort. All planners have collaborative edit access.
Groups
Organise students and staff into groups, teams, or lists. Perfect for sport teams, bus lists, cabin assignments, and group tasks.
Tasks (To Do's)
Add tasks, assign staff, set due dates, add notes, and tick off when complete. Planners and approvers can all comment on tasks.
Pin Events
Pin any event to your personal calendar for quick access. Stay across activities you're interested in, even if you're not directly assigned — perfect for leadership oversight.
Concurrent Editing
Multiple planners can edit the same event simultaneously. Changes are merged intelligently with conflict detection and resolution built-in.
Roll Marking
Intuitive roll-marking for all activities. Mark by occurrence or group, with per-day student alerts surfaced right during the activity.
Integration & Data
School Customisation
Make it yours. Set your school name, URL, logo, and colours. Rename the tool, define event types, campuses, and theme risk assessments — all configured to match your school's structure and identity.
Custom Questions
Add custom tabs with question sets tailored to your school. Available as workflow and risk assessment trigger conditions — full flexibility for your processes.
iCal Subscription
Subscribe to your personal calendar, the community calendar, or (for staff) the staff calendar via iCal — syncing Orca events directly into Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or any external client.
Data Export
Export event data for reporting, archiving, auditing, or input to external systems. Select what to include — basic details, staff lists, student lists, attachments, comments, to-do's, and responses — in CSV, Excel, HTML, PDF, or JSON.
Data Import
Get started fast with CSV and ZIP uploads. Import users, avatars, roles, relationships, and cohorts — ideal for smaller schools, quick starts, or pilots. No IT project required.
Developer API
RESTful API for integrating Orca with your Student Information System, LMS, or other school platforms. Automate data flows and extend Orca's capabilities.
Configuration
Configured to your school's policies
Every school's governance structure is different. Orca adapts to yours. Customise approval workflows, risk assessment templates, event types, campuses, custom question sets, and more. Your processes, enforced systematically.
Built for Australian schools where data security matters.
Every layer of Orca has been designed with Australian school obligations in mind. From where your data is stored, to who can access it, to what happens when you ask us to delete it.
🇦🇺
Australian data hosting
All school and student data is stored and processed in Australian data centres. Nothing leaves the country.
Privacy Act 1988
Orca is built to support your school's obligations under the Australian Privacy Act. Your school remains the data controller; we process on your behalf.
Enterprise infrastructure
Our hosting infrastructure holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications — independently audited. SSO with Microsoft Entra ID and Google Workspace supported.
Student data is not for sale
We don't sell, share, or use student data for any commercial purpose. Ever. Student data is used solely to deliver the service.
Ready to give your whole school community confidence?
See how Orca transforms activity planning at your school. Book a 30-minute demo and we'll walk you through exactly how Orca works, and how it would fit your school's activities, governance structure, and existing systems.
