TracKid – A Location Tracking Application for Children on School Transport

Abstract

Education does not only entail children sitting in class to read books and study, but it also involves activities outside the classroom such as co-curricular activities, transport system, religious activities, and cleaning but unfortunately, they are not given as much thought as anticipated. In the school transport sector specifically, there has been a growing concern among parents on the safety of their children when they are on their way back home to school. Some parents are not able to take their children to and from school due to work demands and frequent traffic snarl-ups, therefore they choose to enroll their child into the school transportation system to cushion them of that burn. The problem however is that even with the school transportation, parents are not able to track the movements of their children while they are on transit to and from school and this has brought about many cases of children getting lost and not arriving home and this results into a blame-game between the school and the parents. The school, in this case, the drivers and the teachers are unable to account for the children and this brings further mistrust, and hence the parents are forced to either bear with the situation or pull out their children from the program altogether and look for alternative options. This paper provides a solution that uses a web application enabling the school, parents and drivers to be accountable for the children while on transit in the school transportation system. This will allow all the stakeholders to communicate efficiently and in turn ensure children’s safety.