MoE Approved and Subsidised for Early Notification
A new Ministry of Education subsidy means that eAR qualifying schools can now get the School-links EN text message and email alert system at no cost.
To qualify for the subsidy schools must be state or state-integrated secondary, composite, or intermediate and be approved (and using) the electrionic attendance register (eAR).
Press Release
June 9, 2010
Subsidy will help beat truancy and improve school attendance
A new Ministry of Education subsidy, which will allow schools to install an Early Notification text and email alert system, is expected to have a dramatic impact on improving school attendance.
The system will allow schools to deliver to parents and caregivers time critical text and email alerts regarding their student’s non attendance at school, amongst other benefits.
Andrew Balfour, Managing Director of School-links, which provides the Early Notification software, said that approximately 30,000 New Zealand children are away from school each day through unexplained absenteeism.
“In the three years since we introduced School-links, the feedback from schools where it has been installed has been very positive.”
Up to 560 intermediate and secondary schools potentially qualify for the Ministry of Education subsidy, which covers their set up fee, annual running costs including text and email messaging. The text message volume covered depends upon their roll size.
“As well as being a great asset for parents and caregivers, Early Notification is invaluable for truancy officers.
“School-links allows schools’ truancy officers up-to-the-minute access to all Early Notification communications and archives, helping to support their family conferences around attendance issues.”
School-links is not just an attendance tool, but a universal parents’ portal and electronic communication system that dramatically improves the quality, frequency and transparency of communications between schools and homes.
“You can imagine a caregiver or mum and dad having to take their child to a school sports event and that event gets postponed or cancelled. School-links will carry that message.
“Caregivers can access and interact with all their children’s schools using the School-links system with just one login and password,” he said.
Comments from schools about the effectiveness of School-links and the benefits:
Teresa Cargo, Deputy Principal, Sacred Heart Girls’ College, Hamilton
“School-links EN has made it a much easier task for our Student Centre to contact parents about missing students. There is much less tag telephoning and most parents have been very positive about the process. The response to texts is usually quite prompt but there has been limited response to the email message.”
Richard Harris, Deputy Principal, Tamaki College
“We have found School-links Early Notification has made a significant difference with regard to our students who regularly attend 80% of the time. It raises attendance to approximately 90% (a 10% shift).”
Viv Mills, Principal’s Secretary, Halswell Primary School
“The feedback we have had from parents is tremendous and they are confident they are receiving up-to- the-minute information between school and home. I have worked in the school office for many years and I can honestly say that School-links is the best thing to be introduced into our school.”
For all enquiries contact andrew.balfour@school-links.co.nz
