(1888PressRelease)
August 30, 2008 - On an average day in Scotland, around 5,000 pupils play truant from school according to 2005/6 Scottish Executive figures. In the capital, this is particularly prevalent, with almost half of pupils at state high schools having skived off by the time they reach their third year*. Mike Scott, Business Manager at Tynecastle High School in Edinburgh discusses the issues surrounding truancy in the city and how Truancy Call, an automated parent notification system has helped reduce unauthorised absence rates at the school by 50 percent.
Tynecastle High School, one of the first schools in the Scottish capital to implement Truancy Call (www.truancycall.com), has been using the system since 2003. Truancy Call significantly reduces the administrative burden on schools by allowing them to implement first-day contact with parents of truants via e-mail, text message and telephone call. Since its implementation, the school has seen unauthorised absence rates drop from 7.3 percent to just 3 percent.
Since August 2006, The City of Edinburgh Council has implemented the system across all primary and secondary schools in the city and Tynecastle has played an active role in promoting the service and discussing issues with other schools. Mike Scott, comments: “We were concerned about the rising rates of unauthorised absence in our school and devised a plan to help combat this. Truancy Call performs an integral role in this process as it allows us to contact parents of missing pupils instantly. In the first six months of using the system we even had a call from The Scottish Executive questioning our annual report due to the remarkable decrease in absentees.”
The school uses Truancy Call as a central part of its anti-truancy strategy. Alongside Truancy Call, the school has also put in a 24-hour phone line messaging service so parents can ring any time of the day or night to let staff know if their child is not going to be in school. Mike comments: “The system has helped open communication with our parents. Many of them lead extremely busy lives and in the past, would not always contact us if their child was out of school for authorised reasons. Now we have Truancy Call in place, which consistently contacts them should their child be absent for any reason, they tend to call and let us know, which saves a lot of administration time.”
Another key part of the school’s anti-truancy strategy is good internal communication. Each day, three classroom assistants make a note of any pupils that are missing and relay this information to Truancy Call. An automated message is then sent out to each pupil’s parent by their preferred medium. The school waits until 10am to notify parents, therefore catering for late arrivals and so not to worry parents unnecessarily. Mike comments: “Truancy Call works extremely well in our school and communication between staff is a vital part of that. Parents trust that when a message is sent out alerting them to their child’s absence, that this is correct and not a case of a late arrival or unrecorded dentist appointment.”
The school also uses Late Call, a new service from Truancy Call that allows them to contact parents when their child is late back into school, for example at lunchtimes. As Tynecastle is an inner city school, pupils are allowed to leave the school grounds at lunch and in the past, many were not returning to class on time. Mike comments: “We decided to use this service as a way to deter students from returning late back to class. They now have to sign in with a classroom assistant and give a reason for their lateness or a message is sent out to their parents. This has helped combat the problem of students turning up at registration and disappearing half way through the day with a full attendance record.”
Mike concludes: "With the amount of crime and violence that young people are experiencing nowadays, schools need to take more responsibility for knowing the whereabouts of their students. Using Truancy Call has dramatically reduced the levels of absenteeism in our school and gives parents the peace of mind that if they’re not contacted, their child is safely in school. The system does, however, have to form part of an overall strategy which has the buy-in of both staff and parents to work optimally.”
For more information on Truancy Call, please contact 0870 046 4246 or visit stand D12 at The Scottish Learning Festival 2008.
• According to a study from The University of Edinburgh.
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