An Orange school is the first in regional NSW to introduce a low-cost scheme to help parents quickly find their children’s lost property.
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For just $3.50 parents at Bletchington Public School can buy a pack of two ‘smart tags’ to be sewn onto hats, jackets and jumpers that will send messages to parents’ mobile phones when they ended up in the school’s lost property boxes.
The tags were spotted by the school’s administrative manager Michelle Gander on a morning TV show.
“I saw it on Channel 10 and I leapt at the chance,” she said.
“Our lost property is out of control.”
Mrs Gander said the RagTagd products were mainly used at airports, bus depots and railway stations that accumulated huge amounts of staff lost property.
However, they have since been introduced into some Sydney schools.
“We’re the first school in regional NSW to use it,” she said.
Mrs Gander said the scheme was low-cost, easy to use, the tags were re-usable and did not create extra work for school staff.
“It’s amazing, there’s very little effort on our behalf.”
Mrs Gander said it was also cost-effective for parents as the tags could be removed from the clothing items when their children grew out of them or they needed replacing and then be placed on new garments.
“You can re-sew them into other clothing,” she said.
Mrs Gander said parents said parents needed to buy the tags from the school office.
“They register the tags using the unique code that is on the tag by sending an SMS to the number given and sew them into your hats, jackets and jumpers.
“They have a chip inside them that is activated once they come into lost property.
“It sends an SMS to their mobile phone and tells them it is in lost property.”
She said the RagTagd scheme was initially designed with the tags already inserted into clothing which she said would not work at Bletchington as the clothing had already been purchased.
However she said the creators, based in Sydney, also developed tags that could be sewed onto clothing.
The school installed its scanner and a rack in the lost property room on Thursday to begin operating the system.
While Bletchington has led the way with this scheme it is expected that if it is proven successful other schools would be keen to adopt it.