What schools say

Ofsted - Attendance in secondary schools report: -
First day calling has been beneficial and automated truancy calls have also been effective: relentless calling has pressed parents/carers to respond. One school used an automated ‘truancy call’ system for first day calling which continually telephoned or sent a text message to parents of every absent pupil up to 20.00 until the parents responded. Previously, some parents would often not answer if their phones indicated that the call was from the school, so this was a major improvement on the previous system. A member of staff commented:
‘Now they know that they will be pestered with continual calls from the automated system unless they do respond.’
(Truancy Call) has had a dramatic effect reducing the number of unauthorised absences from 1,200 last year to 150 this year.
We do not have a particular problem with truancy but parents are not that great at phoning us when their children are ill. Before the system was installed we had a member of staff making an average of 50 calls a day, that was incredibly time consuming.
Authorised absence has dropped at our school from nearly 11 per cent of school time last term to 6.68 per cent. The rate of unauthorised absence is down from more then four per cent to 2.9 percent.