Local High School uses this system. They have issued all registration teachers with a wireless lap-top on which to check the register and this automatically refers any absentees to the system which then dials your designated number and gives an automated "Your child is absent from school message". They used to do this at 0930 hours (ie 30 minutes after registration) but so many frantic parents turned up at the school by 0945 looking for their child (who was usually sat in class where they had been all along) that they now do not call "home" until 11 am. by this time, of course, any missing child will have been missing for well over two hours and could be on a plane somewhere on route to the Middle East. By waiting until 11am however the kids have gone from registration to their first and in some cases second class of the day so the errors made by the registration teacher will have been corrected by the class teachers who now also have a lap-top connected to the system and are having to log pupils presence or otherwise at the start of every single lesson.
Other than the obvious huge cost implication to their budget (this school has 1800 pupils and close to 200 staff) they have achieved diddly squat by "adopting up to date technology".
Oh did I mention that another excuse for this is that it stops the registration and all other teachers having to call out the names and get an affirmative (which can, of course, be given by an absentee's friend). This calling out of names and waiting for an answer was said to be demeaning to the pupils and staff. With the new system the teachers merely have to look round the class to see who is there or not.
YEAH RIGHT!
Now since every child carries a lunch card (previously described) why not, I asked the head, use these for the children to "swipe" in at the beginning of each day and out again in the evenings? That, he told me, would be tooooooo demeaning as it smacked of having to "clock in" and that was "old fashioned.
"Well" I pointed out "They'll have to do that when they leave here and get a job ~ surely it would be a good discipline to get them used to it now. Additionally you would have a record of who entered the premises and who had not which would allow you to have the doors locked, entry gained only by card or intervention (in the case of a lost card by a member of staff who would be able to over-ride the door lock ~ this would improve you security at a stroke and at little additional cost. Far less than all these lap-tops certainly."
He told me I clearly did not understand security.
I was forced to point out that, as the City of London Sales Manager for the largest Security Company in the world I was the one who had designed the security access systems for The Bank of England, Barclays HQ, Coutts Bank, Canary Wharf, The Home Office, A number of USAF Bases in the UK and the DSS in their London Offices. and that I held security clearance from the MOD, The Home Office and Buckingham Palace.
He moved the meeting onto "Any Other Business" immediately.
