Contact Group showcases powerful automatic notification systems for schools and local authorities at BETT 2012
On Stand A31 at BETT 2012, Contact Group (trading name of Truancy Call Ltd) will be showcasing its extended portfolio of award-winning automatic notification systems. These include Looked After Call, a solution to monitor the attendance of Looked after Children and a new ‘Text a Letter’ functionality for its Call Parents system, enabling schools to email or text letters to parents, saving them from having to print and post letters to parents. Contact Group will also be demonstrating its highly successful solutions, including Truancy Call, Text Someone, Term Time Tracker and e-Mentoring.*
Looked After Call is a secure, online solution which collates, monitors and provides a number of required reports to allow the analysis of the attendance of looked after children in and out of borough.
Stephen Clarke, Managing Director, Contact Group, comments: “The gap between the attendance levels of looked after children and those of the rest of the pupil population remains large. Local authorities have an obligation to monitor every looked after child in their care. When a child moves out of a local authority area, they still need to be monitored. At the same time, we are aware local authorities have reduced budgets to contend with.
“Looked After Call offers a lower cost than dealing with this requirement in house or outsourcing. It provides in-depth, online reports on each child’s attendance in a daily, weekly or monthly format. It enables local authorities to quickly report back figures on looked after children and identify absenteeism. In addition, phone calls or text messages can be sent to the carer and/or social worker should a child be absent from school, to ascertain the reason.
Also new to Contact Group is ‘Text a Letter’ functionality for Call Parents, enabling schools to send parents a text message to notify them of letters to view online, saving them time, postage and printing costs. The system sends parents a text prompting them to view the letter online using a unique, secure password and website address to log on to. It also provides reporting on whether the parent has or has not read the letter.
Stephen Clarke adds: “Schools are reviewing their budgets and considering how they can streamline their processes to make the school run more efficiently. Our products are used every day by schools to make processes more efficient, it’s not a piece of kit that is going to be locked away in a cupboard gathering dust, it gives schools excellent return on investment and forms part of their everyday jobs.”
Contact Group’s online notification services are now used by over 2000 schools and local authorities across the UK.
For further information about Contact Group please call 0844 448 4422, email sales@the-contactgroup.com or visit: www.the-contactgroup.com. Follow @contactgroup on Twitter.
*Product portfolio includes:
• Call Parents (www.callparents.com): notifies parents about school closures and events.
• Truancy Call (www.truancycall.com): tackles student absenteeism in schools.
• Looked After Call (www.lookedaftercall.com): reduces the administrative burden on children’s services teams by collating, monitoring and analysing attendance records of ‘looked after children’.
• Text Someone (www.textsomeone.com): encourages students and parents to report incidents of bullying.
• e-Mentoring (www.e-mentoring.co.uk): allows students 24/7 contact with a ‘mentor’ about their work through SMS, mobile phone WAP site, forum or website, anytime, anywhere.
• Term Time Tracker (www.termtimetracker.com): enables LAs and schools to monitor term-time absences.
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About Contact Group:
Contact Group, the new trading name of Truancy Call Ltd is the leading provider of automatic notification systems which facilitate two-way communication between public sector organisations and schools. Its solutions enable schools and local authorities to disseminate important information quickly and easily via email, SMS and automated phone call.
With over a decade’s experience delivering solutions informed by, and designed to answer real school needs, Contact Group works with over 2,000 state and independent primary and secondary schools, academies, nurseries and sixth form colleges in the UK and Ireland.
Highly flexible, Contact Group’s solutions help facilitate whole-school communication with parents, governors, staff and students, providing an efficient and cost-effective way to manage student behaviour, attendance and bullying and notify parents quickly of school closures, payment reminders and general announcements.
Contact Group has strong partnerships with many top academies and federations including ARK, Oasis Learning Community, EACT and Pimlico Academy.
Contact Group solutions integrate seamlessly with all school Management Information Systems (MIS), enabling schools to send messages at the touch of a button, dramatically reducing the administrative time and costs associated with contacting parents individually by phone.
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