CAIRNS schools are sending hundreds of text messages to parents every week in a hi-tech war on wagging.
Police are also playing a greater role in getting children back in the classroom as the Queensland Government orders schools statewide to crack down on chronic truancy.
At Smithfield State High School alone, about 100 SMS alerts are sent daily to parents to warn them their children have not turned up for class.
Mobile Roll Call, an electronic attendance monitoring system reporting truancy in real time, was introduced to the school about three weeks ago.
Similar systems are also operating at Woree and Bentley Park state highs.
Smithfield’s deputy principal Barry Courtney said the SMS alerts helped teachers keep track of truancy.
"Five per cent of students in a year level may be truanting on any given day and now we can track that and are very confident these levels will come down," he told The Weekend Post.
"Truancy is not out of control but it can be hard to manage.
"This system is useful because we don’t have staff making mountains of phone calls to parents. Our truancy and capacity to deal with it is always under pressure because it’s time consuming to keep tracking down kids and now they know if they don’t follow procedures, they’ll get caught out."
Mr Courtney said up to 80 per cent of parents who responded to the text gave legitimate reasons why their children were absent.
Bentley Park College has used the Mobile Roll Call for the past three years.
Principal Darryl Exelby would not disclose how many texts were sent out each day but said the system was "very successful".
"We did it because we felt learning is an important part of education and it’s the best thing we can do to keep attendance levels up," Mr Exelby said.
Woree State High School principal Tony Fuller also would not disclose how many texts were sent out each day. "A lot of our families don’t have home phones so it works well for us," he said.
The Weekend Post on Wednesday witnessed police rounding up three teenage boys who were believed to have been skipping school.
Earlier this year, schools from Tully to Babinda launched a joint initiative with police and businesses to report truants and have them taken back to school.
In Innisfail, police have taken up to 10 students a day back to class and due to the success of the initiative more schools are expected to join.
Queensland Council of Parents and Citizens Association vice-president Margaret Leary supports the Mobile Roll Call and said truants were part of school life.
"They’re (schools) trying to think outside the square and anything that helps truancy is a good thing," Mrs Leary said.
The exact number of students who wag each day in the Far North is unknown because the Education Department does not keep records.
"It is an issue best managed at school level," a spokesman said.
Figures released in 2005 found more than 1.2 million days were lost in secondary schools alone each year through unexplained absences – an average of 7.5 for each student.
