Australian anti-truancy company claims red-tape keeping it away

An Australian company specialising in anti-truancy programmes says Ministry of Education red tape is impeding its chances of success in New Zealand.

A pilot programme at three Wellington schools run by a New Zealand company - using modern technology to alert parents of their children's absence from school - failed, a ministry report published last week said.

Messages were conveyed by email, cellphone text or phone call, but the report showed just 9 per cent of parents replied to one school's text messages.

The highest response was 45 per cent, to an automated voice message and each message cost more than $2 to send.

South Australia-based MGM Wireless runs an anti-truancy programme which it says is used by more than 230 Australian and United States schools.

MGM had found the ministry's compliance criteria too tightly coupled with one vendor's solution, chief executive Mark Fortunatow said.

"The ministry has ... under-estimated the complexity of this and gone into it with a technology-based answer."

In the past two months 62 New Zealand schools had requested information about its programme.

"But we cannot respond to that because the ministry has put specifications in place ... which makes it impossible for a company like ours or other companies to work in the New Zealand marketplace."

A message should not cost more than 24 cents, he said.

- NZPA