Castle View School

Texting helps drive truancy rates down

Castle View secondary school wanted to get truancy rates down. A dedicated Attendance Officer, supported by an SMS text notification system has successfully reduced the truancy rate to 0.5% – placing attendance well above the 95% set by the Government.

Why did they do this?

In the UK an estimated 63,000 pupils are missing school each day without permission – Castle View needed to keep up the pressure to reduce truancy.

Now: Parents are immediately notified by text if their child fails to turn up for registration, with a request to contact the school to provide a reason for absence.

How they did this:

• Text Message Server is integrated with Castle View’s Schools Information System (SIMS) and linked to the schools electronic ‘registers’.
• Contact information for parents, including a designated priority mobile phone number is held within SIMS.
• A report is generated following statutory morning registration and text messages created and sent from the desktop to the parents of children who are absent.

Customer quote:

“We shall always have a degree of absence because of illness and unauthorised absence (e.g. we do not generally authorise holiday absence), however we are confident that general truancy is identified and dealt with. We are delighted with the reduction in ‘real’ truancy – in a school of 900 pupils 0.5% represents a significant reduction, but a manageable number on which to focus. We all feel that the texting service has had a positive impact”.

Russell Sullivan, Headteacher at Castle View School

More information

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