Truancy Call goes live in New South Wales, Australia

A pet favourite of mine is connecting students, parents and their educational establishments. So it was with delight that I opened up the news this morning from Truancy Call.

Burwood Girls’ High School in Sydney is the first school in the State of New South Wales to implement Truancy Call to tackle pupile absence and improve parent/school communications.

Truancy Call is an automatic notification system that enables staff to establish first day contact with the parents of absent or late students via text message, automated phone call or email until a response is received. It ensures that parents and carers are automatically informed at the beginning of the day if a child is absent.

That is genius. It’s not entirely difficult, I know, but judging by how disorganised schools in Britain are, you’d have to move mountains before you got this kind of information from them. And it’s the sort of thing I (as an imaginary parent, at this point) would want to know.

Parents are not only to be notified of their daughter’s absence via text message, automated phone call or email, but also to respond in the same way.

That is DOUBLE GENIUS. Critical. It’s rather inconvenient receiving a text message that then prompts you to call, isn’t it? Especially if you’ve just had a text and you’re in the middle of a really important meeting, you can at least get a reply back to the school right-away then excuse yourself and call up for more information.

Parents are apparently up to seven times more responsive to this multi-tiered system than to text message systems alone (especially if English isn’t your first language, this is a good way of connecting with the school).

The Australian Department of Education has made it mandatory that schools promptly inform parents of any unexplained absence from school. Previously schools had to send a letter home to parents within three days of the incident. This new requirement is no doubt why another 80+ Australian schools are reportedly signing up right-away to implement Truancy Call. Smart.

They’ve seen measurable improvements in student attendance and reductions in unauthorised absences already at Burwood Girls’ School — directly atributed to Truancy Call. Right on.

If you’d like more information on Truancy Call, drop a call to Darrell Smith in Australia — 02 9908 7397 or whack a mail to sales at truancycall.com.