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Schools to SMS parents

Jennifer Foreshew, The AustralianIT
AUGUST 02, 2005

TWICE daily, morning and afternoon, an SMS message is sent to the mobile phone of parents of students absent from Mitchelton State High School, in Brisbane's western suburbs.

The number of unexplained absences per student has plummeted from eight days to 0.44 days a year since it an anti-truancy messaging system was introduced more than 12-months ago. Mitchelton State High School, which has about 570 students, is one of a growing number of schools, public and private, to introduce automated messaging systems.

Mitchelton State High School principal John Fitzgerald said overall absences were down from 17 days per student a year, also the state average, to just 10.

More than 90 per cent of parents have listed their mobile phone number with the school.

Mitchelton High, which spends $200 a term on SMS messages, previously spent about four hours daily calling parents of absent students, for results similar those of the automated solution.

"The messaging system has automated the process and has saved us a lot of time, enabling parents to immediately flag back a reason via a text message," said Mr Fitzgerald, who took up the system on his own initiative.

Mitchelton State High School uses a messaging system from Adelaide-based MGM Wireless, and has developed it to further automate communication with parents.

It plans to put in a wireless network and eventually provide tablet devices to teachers to track attendance across the whole school.

"The bulk of parents are very happy with the anti-truancy messaging system," Mr Fitzgerald said.

"Students are looking for loopholes, as they always will, but I think they realise that the school is trying to put in place a process that is going to increase their attendance rates, and that will correlate directly to their academic performance."

Research data from schools indicates they are seven times more likely to reach a parent by SMS than landline phone call, email and letter combined, according to MGM Wireless chairman and chief executive officer Mark Fortunatow.

The MGM Wireless anti-truancy messaging system is used by more than 150 australian schools and is being adopted in New Zealand, where it will go live in about a month.

Mr Fortunatow said the system generally delivered sustained improvements in student attendance of between 30 and 80 per cent.

The system, which integrates with a school's student management system, automatically detects an absence and constructs a message to the parent, and then sends it.

"It will also send a reminder SMS or generate a phone call, letter or email," Mr Fortunatow said.

The MGM Wireless Message You system costs $10 to $18 per student to introduce, with an ongoing licence fee of about two thirds of that.

Mr Fortunatow expects business to double or triple every year.

He plans to have at least 300 schools using the technology next year and is rolling out a new product to existing customers that helps schools analyse and follow up student absences.

Rival Brisbane company McFie Solutions is also offering an SMS-based system called SMS Absentee Notifications Manager (ANM).

The system is used by Elanora State High School, on the Gold Coast, which has about 1200 students.

"Using the system, 30 unexplained absentees daily saves more than $10,000 in a year when you compare it with a manual system," ANM developer Cameron McFie said.

ANM connects to a school's management system using an internet-based SMS gateway to generate two-way messaging.

It has a one-off cost of $5000 to introduce the system, plus SMS charges of 23.5 cents to 24.5 cents, based on a pre-paid package.

"I think the major benefit to schools is making sure the children are safe and the parents know that they are away," Mr McFie said.

The company, which plans to introduce SMS and PDA-based systems for other industries, is aiming to roll out the system to 50 Queensland schools in the next six months.

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