Three decades ago, working parents and full-time parents were worried about their child’s well-being. Working parents depended and relied on grandparents, extended family, full-time domestic help, neighbours and even unlicensed creches for childcare. However, this did not mean that full-time parents, mostly mothers, had nothing to worry about. Since mothers tended to the household or were unable to drive their children to school, it was common to send children in private vehicles, carpool, school buses, with servants or a specially appointed person who took groups of children to school.
Challenges Experienced by Parents
Since there were no mobile phones, CCTV facilities or GPS, parents simply trusted the concerned persons and asked their children if everything was all right. Furthermore, there was no way of knowing if the child was telling the truth or someone was pressuring or coercing the child into lying. There was also the risk of the child not alighting the school bus or private vans in time. In these cases, school buses simply left and alternative arrangements had to be made to drop the child to school. This caused much inconvenience to parents and children.
IT and Child Safety
With rising crimes against children, it has become more urgent than ever to devise solutions to ensure their safety and well- being. Thankfully, the swift advances in information technology and digital connectivity have given rise to school vehicle tracking apps, live camera access in daycare facilities, Whatsapp and SMS to communicate with school staff etc. — tools that help parents ensure their child’s safety.
myskoolbus is one such application that tracks school buses in real-time and sends notifications and updates to parents and teachers. Notifications include the bus’s location, the child boarding the bus, arrival time at the school, departure, alerts in case the bus breaks down etc.
Pooja Khemka, Founder and CEO, trackNOW Pvt. ltd., who developed the myskoolbus App can relate to parental anxiety about child safety as she too is a parent. She states, “It’s just like keeping fingers crossed every day until you see your child coming back from school”.
The app is popular with schools and optimized for computers, smartphone and tablets. Manan Choksi, Executive Director, Udgam School and Zebar School for Children states, “I didn’t expect myskoolbus to be so convenient, so useful, and so relevant, it is a boon for working parents”.
Thousands of parents have welcomed the myskoolbus application for its reliability and convenience. “Larger ecosystem partners are school chains that have multiple branches across the country. Recently, CBSE has made it compulsory for schools to use GPS in their vehicles” adds Pooja Khemka. Above all, parents can now rest assured that their children are safe and sound.
