In Rome, if students skip classes a text message will be automatically sent to their parents’ mobile phones. This idea makes the SMS a real menace for teenagers.

Ornella Bergamini, the school board official who coordinated this experimental project said that text messaging lets parents know when their children were skipping school in real time and it will be a useful deterrent.

A similar project has been experimented in Australia, England and parts of Asia.

Mauro Mastriani, who devised the program for the Rome school district, said the directness of the mobile phone messaging would prompt families to communicate more. As a result, he said, “dialogue should be constructive for families, and students will have more incentives to go to school.”

Compared with other methods used by the schools to inform the parents about their children, this method is the cheapest and makes it a good choice. Other parents from different school districts expressed their wish to bring this system to the schools where they send their children.

Giorgio Rembado, the president of Italy’s school principals’ association is not so thrilled about the project saying that it’s potentially dangerous. “It’s an automatic system that triggers an SMS that could throw families into alarm mode. You really need a filter that uses the technology intelligently.” – he concluded.