Thousands of students skip school everyday. It is a problem in every school district across the globe.
Now RFID tracking technology is being used in countries like the UK and Brazil to help tackle the issue.
This week education officials in Bahia, Brazil say 20,000 students have started wearing “intelligent” school uniforms embedded with an RFID locator microchip, similar to those used to track missing pets.
The tracking system uses an RFID microchip embedded either under the school’s coat of arms or in one of the sleeves. Education officials say the microchip would be impossible to remove, without destroying the uniform.
As students enter the school, the tracking system registers their arrival. The tracking system also registers when a student leaves.
RFID chips in the uniforms let a computer know when children enter school and it sends a text message to their parents’ cell phones. Parents are also alerted if kids don’t show up 20 minutes after classes begin with the following message: “Your child has still not arrived at school.”
“We noticed that many parents would bring their children to school but would not see if they actually entered the building because they always left in a hurry to get to work on time,” eduction secretary Coriolano Moraes said. “They would always be surprised when told of the number times their children skipped class.”
After a student skips classes three times parents will be asked to explain the absences. If they fail to do so, the school may notify authorities, Moares said.
Bahia’s local government spent $670,000 designing the tracking system and making the shirts for the first 20,000 students.
City officials said they plan to make more so that all 43,000 public school students in the city from ages 4 to 14 can use the high-tech shirts by 2013.