For the past year, pupils at Amy Johnson School have been secretly watched by attendance staff. What time they came to school and which lessons they are in are all recorded electronically.
Every teacher has a palm top computer which has taken over from the traditional paper register.
It receives and transmits pupil data via a series of ariels around the school from a central computer. This computer stores all the information about all of the pupils in school. The school now knows when a pupil is present in school, but more importantly, we know when a pupil is skipping a lesson, and we act upon it. It is a very powerful tool. But the system is not limited to just registering pupils.