Software generated attendance letter about dead pupil

Capita apologise to stunned parents

Capita is modifying its school management software after a letter about poor attendance was sent to the parents of a girl who had died.

Macclesfield High School in Cheshire, which uses Capita's SIMS (school information management system) software, apologised to the parents of Megan Gillan for the distress the letter caused.

Megan's name had been taken off the school roll when she died and removed from the main school database. However, her details had remained in a different part of the computer system and were used when the school generated a mail merge letter to the parents of all year 11 students.

The letter called up details of each student's attendance for the whole year to date and because Megan had been on roll in September, she was included. Capita have asked the school to convey their apologies to Mr and Mrs Gillan.

The mistake happened as a result of a problem with Sims, which is used in about 80 per cent of schools across the country. The school said that Capita had acknowledged that there is a problem with part of its software and is working to remedy it, because they realised that it could affect other schools.

In a statement to GC News the company said: "SIMS is being modified this week so that schools will no longer be able to produce attendance letters for former pupils to prevent this situation happening again."

This article was originally published at Kablenet.

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