Dead girl given truancy warning


The parents of a girl who died suddenly have received a school letter demanding she improve her attendance.

Megan Gillan, 15, was found dead in the bedroom of her home in Macclesfield, Cheshire, two months ago.

Her parents say they were "floored" by a Macclesfield High School letter, which threatened to ban Megan from the end of year prom.

The school has apologised for the mistake, which they said was down to an error on the computer database.

The letter, dated 16 March, said "students must have at least 92% attendance and Megan's is currently 60.4%".

Mrs Gillan, who works in A&E at Macclesfield Hospital, said: "I screamed when I first saw it. If they want her to attend that much I'll take Megan's remains. It's disgusting.

"Megan doesn't go to that school any more. She's been dead for two months now so it's not surprising her attendance is low.

"I was pulling myself together to go back to work, but receiving the letter has just floored me.

"Megan would have loved going to the prom. She planned to go with a group of friends, she was really looking forward to it."

Cheshire County Council said the school's head teacher Ged Ward has telephoned the family to apologise.

Computer problem

A spokesman said Capita software SIMS (School Information Management Systems) maintained Megan's details.

"Megan's name had been taken off the school roll when she died, and removed from the main school database," the spokeswoman said.

"However, unknown to the school, her details had remained in a different part of the computer system and were called up when the school did a mail merge letter to the parents of all Year 11 students about their prom.

"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."

'Deep regret'

Phil Neal, managing director of SIMS, Capita Children's Services, said changes would be made to the firm's software to make sure the mistake was not repeated.

"When a child is no longer attending a school, for whatever reason, the software will allow the school to continue to produce letters to their parents as occasionally it is necessary to do so.

"It appears that this is what has happened in this case which everyone involved deeply regrets.

"We have all been saddened that this caused so much distress to the family."

THE BBC

How unfortunate, but mistakes do happen. Shame it was such a sensitive error.

Damm computers, the old school secretary wouldn't of cocked up like that.

Thats right blame a computer - oh and who switches the computer on and tells it what to do? A human.
Human error, sorry.

Thats not the kind words you say to your computer at work!

I didn't think for one minute it wasn't human error somewhere along the line but these days whoever puts the information in doesn't always take it out, with this programme and that programme I'm not surprised no one knows whats going on. In my day the only computer was the school secretary's brain and there's no way she would have made that mistake. She knew everything that was going on.

bit ott, mistakes happen......

If you're referring to me I am only going by my experience of school secretaries and how fooking useless they can be!! Especially when you want to see the Head and all they are concerned about is protecting his time - even if you have something serious like your child being bullied to inform him about!!

Rant has ended - this was due to a technical error *insert blue screen of death here*

lol, tbh miss g, I just read the headline, saw all the replies and thought 'wowzer, its just a technical error' and that was that really

Aaa I see - the beauty of forums - you can never quite tell what someone means in just the words they use - no intonations, no facial expressions etc. Plus I'm very good at jumping the gun - sorry Sanchez

not at all miss g, i guess I should read things a bit more before casting the old opinion < smiley just for you !

Typical error if you rely on a computer 100% to give you information.

Capita did not really explain how they cocked up, still, i suppose no one would ever let that kind of thing happen if it could have been prevented. I wonder if the parents will take any action against the school. I just can't imagine what they are going through, but hope they find comfort from somewhere.