Swindon School Raises Attendance with Truancy Call

10th September 2010

... Comments

The Best of Swindon Team supports Swindon School's Anti-Truancy Strategy. Over 13 million school half days are lost due to unauthorised absence across the UK each year. The Government has set a target to reduce absence rates so that by 2011 no local authority will have more than 5% of its secondary school pupils as persistent absentees.

Maintaining good communication with parents is key to the success of a school’s anti-truancy strategy, so schools should engage them in the very earliest stages of absenteeism. By installing Truancy Call (www.truancycall.com), Wootton Bassett School – a secondary school with 1,600 pupils - is taking positive steps to achieve this.

Stephen Clarke, Managing Director of Truancy Call, commented: “Wootton Bassett School appreciates the necessity of contacting parents on the first day of their child’s absence. If the Government and schools are to continue successfully tackling truancy, it is vital that they implement early prevention strategies, so that children taking the odd day off here and there can be quickly identified, and the problem resolved before it gets to a stage when a child is persistently truanting.”

The Secondary School in Swindon is also taking a proactive approach to improving communication with parents by installing Call Parents (www.callparents.com). This technology allows school staff to send texts, automated phone calls and emails to inform parents regularly about their child’s progress and school activities such as parents’ evenings and closures. Should parents not own a mobile phone, Call Parents translates the text into voice and delivers it to a landline phone.

About the Author