Visakhapatnam: Now, parents who send their children to GVMC-run schools can heave a sigh of relief as they would get prompt messages regarding their presence in school and academic activities.

Whenever a student enters the school the biometric attendance system would send an immediate message to the parents and vice versa in the evening at the time of leaving.

The GVMC is implementing this novel programme on a pilot basis in two municipal schools in the city, and would shortly be extending it to another 15 schools after verifying its efficacy. The KDPM School at Peda Waltair and NMCH in Seethammadhara have been selected for the pilot programme.

The GVMC has deployed software developed by Fast Forward Technologies to make the project a reality.

“The pilot programme, Campus Track, is really useful for parents who send their children, especially girls, to city schools. We have entered the data of children of the two schools along with the mobile numbers of their parents. Whenever they enter and leave the school, the biometric system would send automatic messages to the parents,” said V. Sudhir Kumar of Fast Forward Technologies.

He said the GVMC had also asked them to generate periodical reports regarding attendance, marks and other school-related acti-vity/information.

This would certainly develop a close relationship between the school management and parents, he said.

Officials who verified the efficacy of the project and the responses of parents have decided to extend the tracking to other corporation schools in the city. For tracking Fast Forward Technologies has prepared an exclusive software for sending SMSes to parents integrating it with the biometric systems installed at the schools.

Teachers also need not prepare attendance and progress reports of students periodically. The software prepares them automatically when teachers provide information regarding examinations.

A senior official from the GVMC said this would be very helpful to parents to track their children’s movements and academic activity. Teachers were also instructed to use the biometric system while coming and leaving the school, he added.