Crackdown on school truancy.

Teenage tearaways can forget skipping their least-favoured classes and getting away with it. At least, that will soon be the case for students attending schools in Romes 13th municipality, which includes the seaside resort Ostia, according to a report in Italian daily La Repubblica. From next Saturday, if students fail to turn up for classes, their schools will be able to send an SMS to their parents informing them of their absence. Providing an absentee request bearing a parents falsified signature will be impossible now that parents are informed of an absence in advance. The scheme, called Vision School, is a trial project that is part of a wider inter-school cooperation programme called Portalnet Scuola. Vision School will run for three months from 1 October until the end of the year and involves all state schools elementari (elementary), medie (middle) and superiori (high) in the area. Initially it will focus on early teens attending the late middle school and early high school, which are considered the age group most likely to play truant.