Student-tracker scheme to beat school-shy

Intermediate and secondary schools will soon be able to access a system which keeps tags on non-enrolled students.

The internet scheme tracks children who have changed schools and automatically triggers an alert after 20 days if they have not enrolled elsewhere.

Schools will keep the database up to date by adding details of new students and those who have left to change schools. The central register should be accessible by the end of the term one next year.

"Students who have been out of school for more than 20 days will be quickly and accurately identified by the system as non-enrolled and will trigger an alert for the Ministry of Education and other services to begin tracing them," Associate Education Minister David Benson-Pope said.

The project had been under development for a year and a trial at six Manurewa schools would begin in August, he said.

The Government had allocated $4.8 million for the project in the 2005 Budget.

About 6000 non-enrolments were notified to the ministry in 2003 and 40 per cent of those students had been already enrolled at other schools or had legally left the compulsory school sector, Mr Benson-Pope said.

Meanwhile, an anti-truancy project which automatically notifies parents by text message is being evaluated by the Government to determine whether it is suitable for all schools, the minister said.

A pilot scheme at five schools had indicated a significant improvement in student attendance rates.

"This is cutting-edge technology and uses a range of notification techniques - email, text, mobile and landline voice calls," Mr Benson-Pope said.

"It will improve the timeliness and quality of school-parent communications about attendance and absence, and will free up resources at schools, allowing them to focus on harder cases."

A trial in South Auckland of a streamlined process to prosecute parents who condoned truancy was having encouraging results, Mr Benson-Pope said.

The joint trial with the Crown Solicitor's Office began late last year.

Of an initial 30 students whose attendance was monitored, 16 showed significant improvement after a letter warning of prosecution was sent to their parents.

- NZPA