Unexplained absenteeism is a real problem for schools of today. With a large percentage of children coming from families where both parents work, in many cases it's up to the students to get themselves off to school each day - a process that requires both discipline and motivation (a quality teenagers are unfortunately not renowned for). And that's where the problems can start.

However, notifying parents of their children's absenteeism is a timely and expensive process. A staff member has to physically set aside a certain amount of time each day to manually phone a family member/guardian of an attending child to advise them that their child is absent from school. In effect, this could take anywhere from two to six hours depending on the number of children absent on any given day combined with the number of phone calls it takes to track down the parent involved (NB# this process is referred to as phone recall factor in other parts of this webpage).

Absentee Notifications Manager (ANM) does away with this outdated methodology and replaces it with an easy-to-use system designed to save you both time and money.

ANM is a notifications system using Short Message Service (SMS) and Email to notify parents/guardians that their child has not arrived at school. Using the existing school management system database, ANM performs a query to find the daily unexplained absentees and the parent-in-question's contact details. It then sends out an automated SMS or email to the parent/guardian notifying them that their child is absent.

Parents/guardians are then asked to contact the school advising staff of one of two things:

• They are aware their child is away for a particular reason; or
• They will look into the matter and get back to the school at a later time.

McFie Solutions strongly recommends keeping the channels of communication open between both school and parent/guardian. Absenteeism can be a sticky issue and only by working together can the desired outcome be achieved.

As mentioned previously, ANM can save a school both time and money. Let's look at an example of how it does this:

• A Queensland high school experiences 50 unexplained absences on average a day for an entire school year. A staff member manually phones each parent/guardian involved to find out why a child is absent. The total cost under this existing method (taking into account a phone recall factor of one-and-a-half times) is just over $12,000 a year. However, by simply changing the process and implementing ANM, the school can save on a staff member's time as well as more than $8000 a year (see the Value Calculator).

ANM is also a useful reporting and recording tool. It provides the school with documented history of absentee notification.

And it does in fact reduce absenteeism - the Victorian Education Department can vouch for the success of SMS-based absentee alerts. An article was published in the Victorian Education Times mid-last year explaining about SMS-based absentee alerts. The article stated that in one school alone they trialled SMS alerts to parents when an explanation was not received by 10am. After just 15 months, the school found that unexplained absentees dropped by 80 per cent.

But the most important reason for using ANM lies with the fact that you are proving to parents you care about their child's education. You are saying to them, "we want to work with you to help achieve your child's dreams".

Put simply, ANM works.

It's a product that can be tailor-made to suit your needs.

It does save time and money.

And it's easy to use - no "gadget degree" necessary prior to installation.

ANM is a tool that your school needs to keep it ahead of the rest.