Technical glitches have prevented a computer system at CedarBridge Academy from keeping track of absent students.

The hi-tech system was scheduled to be implemented in September of this year to inform parents or guardians by telephone of a student's absence.

Through the Win School (computerised school organisation) programme a computer is able to talk to another computer which calls contact numbers in the school system.

It is designed to state the date and class the student missed and instruct the parents or guardians to contact the school to explain the absence.

If there is no response or the student is missing for more than one day, an advisor would follow up.

However, CedarBridge principal Ernest Payette told The Royal Gazette : "It's not been going well at all. We've had technical difficulties.'' But Mr. Payette quickly pointed out that staff were on top of the situation.

In fact, he estimated that non-attendance by students -- which one day during the last school year was as high as 40 percent -- had dropped some eight to 11 percent. And he attributed this to the success of the advisor/advisee programme.

"We instituted an advisor/advisee programme where one teacher is responsible for ten students,'' he explained. "If a child has more than two unexcused absences within a week, the advisor will notify the parents or guardians.

"We still would like to get our (computer tracking) system in place because we have two different systems. The computer network telephone system uses a different programme and administration uses another programme. There's some problem with the interfacing.

"But rather than create a headache for ourselves we have decided not to use the computer to track truancy.'' Mr. Payette stressed that the advisor/advisee system was working "very well''.

"Ninety percent of the time we've found it to be very effective,'' he said.

"We're doing a much better job of tracking the students.'' However, he added that he welcomed the focus on truancy in the new Government's Throne Speech.

The Progressive Labour Party has promised, among other changes in education, to hire attendance officers. "I'm glad to see it focused on that,'' Mr.

Payette said. "But we need to know what the role of the truancy officer will be, particularly if they operate off site. It has to be more than the dog catcher mentality. There has to be the counselling part.

"But at this point in time any support that we can get will be helpful.'' While he did not expect to have complete figures on attendance until the school semester was over at the end of January, Mr. Payette estimated non-attendance by students at CedarBridge had decreased.

"We're down to less than one in ten,'' he said. "But I'm cautious of throwing numbers out. I will know by the end of January. I'll be looking at the information class by class.'' While the Education Ministry keeps no statistics on internal truancy (students skipping classes after arriving at school), absenteeism varied from five percent to 30 percent in the Island's middle and senior secondary schools last year.

With more than 1,100 students at CedarBridge at the time, anonymity was believed to have been a factor in the problem.

But with Berkeley accepting some 96 students from middle schools as of September, CedarBridge now has less than 1,000 students.

And as part of an initiative to curb school absenteeism, the former Government promised to pay full Bermuda College tuition to students from the two senior secondary schools -- CedarBridge and Berkeley Institute, who maintained a 95 percent attendance record, a strong academic record and agreed to be drug tested.

The PLP has not commented on this proposal and Premier and Education Minister Jennifer Smith has been unavailable for comment on the issue.