News Item
Simple txt and open systems needed for success in truancy solution
PRESS RELEASE
27 September, 2006
Australian company MGM Wireless (ASX:MWR) has called for the New Zealand Minister of Education to reduce the red tape currently tying up vendors, following reports that an anti-truancy trial provided by a New Zealand company has failed to deliver on its promises.
Early Notification Protocol compliance criteria imposed by the Education Ministry include a specification that is tightly coupled with one vendor’s solution.
“The protocol is based on the assumption that a truancy solution would require communication via voice and email as well as text,” said MGM CEO Mark Fortunatow.
“This not only makes the solution more expensive, it can be more confusing and time consuming for both the school and the parent. Importantly, it also fails to recognise that the solution needs to be sensitive to the culture of the school community and is not all about technology.”
Mr Fortunatow added that the apparent failure of the trial highlights the risk of working with an unproven solution.
In the past eight weeks, MGM has received more than 50 faxed enquiries about messageyou™ from New Zealand, representing 12 percent of all secondary schools.
“This demonstrates that New Zealand schools are committed to addressing the issue of truancy and are still seeking a solution that actually works,” Mr Fortunatow said.
“Each school’s communication policy needs to be re-engineered before the first message is sent,” Mr Fortunatow said.
“messageyou™ has been successful in both Australia and the United States because we employ educational communication experts who have worked in schools for decades. Our approach encourages cooperation between parents and schools.”
Launched more than three years ago, MGM’s messageyou™Schools is used in more than 230 Australian schools, cutting truancy by 30-90 percent and reducing unexplained absences in some schools to below 1 percent.
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