Automating attendance letters/emails - anything out there?

[AlanPartridgeAhaa]

I left IT in education a few years ago so am somewhat out of touch with what's out there software-wise. I'm a Governor at my son's Primary School and they've asked me for recommendations on software that will automate the paperwork relating to late/non-attendance to free up the attendance officer to deal with the cases that need more time and attention. It's a SIMS school and my hour of Googling hasn't given me anything useful so far, then I remembered this place! Any pointers in the right direction much appreciated.

 

Edit: It seems SIMS can do this, but knowing the school anything that makes life easier via a user friendly interface, can do this by email or just works with minimal involvement from the office staff would be useful.

Edited July 17, 2022 by AlanPartridgeAhaa

[3s-gtech]

Is the report for this in the Reports list? If so, you should be able to automate it running using the commandreporter command line utility.

That can spit the required reports out on a schedule (via Scheduled Tasks) to an accessible folder.

[Primus]

A Star Attendance?

[Rizzo]

https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk/

 

Also sends letters (only used the SMS)

[dhicks]

https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk/

 

Is that available for individual schools to use, or do you need to get that set up at the the local authority level? It would certainly make sense for state schools, but if nothing else I'd guess the central service is going to want some kind of billing set up.

 

I've found Mailchimp's API for transactional email sends to be easy enough to work with, and sensibly priced - you pay per block of email sends. I think they have a similar structure for SMS.

[TechMonkey]

There are a few systems. Schoolpost, is one, it will talk to SIMS and pull through attendance and then can automatically SMS or email parents. Parent's can then respond and it be received by the system.

It's not cheap though for just that.