MGM Case Study - Willunga High School, South Australia

More than 90 percent of students attending Willunga High School arrive at school by bus, car and bicycle.

The Year 8-12 co-ed school, in the rural town of Willunga 45 km south of Adelaide, is at the centre of a wide feeder area that stretches inland to Mount Compass, north to Sellicks Beach and south to McLaren Flat.

Deputy Principal Cathy Trenouth says that 10 minutes after classes finish the school is empty.
Limited public transport in the area – one bus every 90 minutes – has contributed to an absence management problem.

“If a student sleeps in or misses a bus, they are going to find it tricky to get to school, unless parents have their own transport and aren’t working themselves,” Ms Trenouth says.

Before adopting messageyou™ from messaging company MGM Wireless, Willunga’s approach to absenteeism was to mail letters to parents. The home group teacher would notify front office staff of a student’s absence, generating a letter. Responses would be monitored and further letters sent out to discuss or update the matter.

“It became a paper war because we had so many letters going out,” Cathy Trenouth said. “Also it was reliant on the homegroup teacher sending the front office a proforma to generate the letter.”

Because there was no guarantee of next day delivery, communication with parents was slowed down and in some cases it was closing the stable door after the horse had bolted. The system wasn’t working to reduce truancy.

“In one random check of our attendance group, we had 100 unexplained absences in the day, out of 670 students,” Ms Trenouth said.

The school had heard about messageyou’s success in other schools through media reports and decided to investigate how it could be used to improve parent communication at Willunga.
Teachers and administrators visited several messageyou sites across South Australia to find out more about the system and the results.

“We were very impressed, and we learned that the implementation itself would help us improve all our internal processes related to absence management,” Ms Trenouth said.

“When we called MGM in to demonstrate the system, they proved to be very professional. They sat down with us and were clear from the outset. They had lots of proformas for different aspects of the process, and their communication has been fantastic.

“They have a willingness to adapt systems and they have gone beyond just a business organisation and have adapted themselves well to schools and education. They have taken a lot of feedback from schools and used it to improve their systems.”

The school’s first step was to send out information in the school newsletter to tell parents about messageyou and why it was being considered.

“We found the materials MGM provided to be very useful,” Ms Trenouth said. “I modified a parent information sheet to verify and request permission to use mobile phone numbers.

“Only half a dozen parents said they preferred not to receive an SMS and there is an occasional time when the student does not sign in and the parents are sent a text message in error, but they generally tell me they are glad the system is working.”

Now, the homegroup teachers take the rolls manually as usual and hand them in to the front office, where they are entered into the EDSAS school management system. The messageyou system then automatically and seamlessly integrates with the student database to extract the relevant parent contact details.

Training was straightforward. “MGM staff conducted initial training with all the teachers and administrative officers involved, and even when we had a new staff member, it didn’t take long for her to get to know the system.”
The system has also changed the culture of the school. It didn’t take long for students to realise that their parents would know immediately that they were wagging school.

“We met with a bit of resistance from some of the senior students who don’t believe they should have to sign in, but it’s not negotiable,” Ms Trenouth said. “We must have verification that they are at school, and student safety was a strong deciding factor in implementing the system. The sooner we can alert our parents to an absence, the better.”

The system has had a significant impact. When Willunga looked at the data over a term of using messageyou, they found that unexplained absences had been reduced by;

• 90% in year 8
• 60% in year 9
• 70% in year 10
• 55% in year 11
• 60% in year 12.

“This marked improvement in general attendance makes it much easier to isolate the students where there was a real issue,” Ms Trenouth said. “It makes it much easier to identify students really at risk and establish a working relationship with the attendance officer to provide extra support.”

Ms Trenouth’s advice for other schools contemplating a text-messaging solution is to ensure data accuracy.

“The best advice I can give a school is to focus on accuracy in the roll book, particularly with part-time students, and make sure the mobile phone numbers are accurate, particularly for students with custody orders.

“Our other advice is not to overuse the system. Parents are happy to get occasional important messages, such as a parent-teacher night reminder, but they don’t want to know about every school event.”

Now that Willunga has addressed the absence issue, it is focusing on lateness and intends to implement a swipe card system to complement messageyou.

“Students will need to swipe their photo ID card to indicate they have arrived in class. It gives the students more responsibility to ensure they have signed in and it automates another process to improve our absence management outcomes even further.”

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Woree State High School - Queensland “In year 8 we have experienced around 60 percent reduction in unexplained absence and 35 percent in grade 9.” Barry Courtney, Deputy Principal. Details.. St Hilda’s Anglican School For Girls - Western Australia “We want parents to know everything about the girls and at the same time demonstrate the proactive measures we are taking to keep them safe.” Diana Stanley, Dean of Students. Details.. Bradfield College - New South Wales “We had a sophisticated student tracking system already in place and wanted an absence management solution that would complement this, using SMS technology that would appeal to our students.” Helen Kam, Director. Details.. Kildare College - South Australia “While the primary use of messageyou is to manage unexplained absences, the opportunity exists to expand to general messaging such as reminders, and improve our general communication.” Paul Hawkes Business Manager. Details.. Willunga High School - South Australia “A marked improvement in general attendance makes it much easier to isolate the students where there is a real issue. It makes it much easier to identify students really at risk and establish a working relationship with the attendance officer to provide extra support.” Cathy Trenouth, Deputy Principal. Details..