Parents who pledged to stage a march in protest at a new student management system have been given assurances that it will be fixed.

Education Minister Terry Lister met with Karen Belboda, chairman of CedarBridge Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA), yesterday to discuss the Chancery SMS computer system, which records pupil attendance and produces reports.

It was installed in all of the Island?s public schools last September but has been plagued with problems, leading to a question in the House of Assembly over its reliability and accuracy.

Parents at CedarBridge voted at a meeting on Tuesday to march down to the Ministry of Education on Dundonald Street with their children unless Mr. Lister agreed to meet over their concerns.

Ms Belboda told The Royal Gazette last night that the Minister promised at the meeting to have the system fixed by June and for features not currently available to be installed.

Ms Belboda said: ?We went through the concerns about the system and basically took the Minister to task for the department?s handling of the whole issue and they agreed it could have been handled better.

?The eventual outcome is we have elicited promises that they will give us all we have asked for. We are going to hold them to it.?

She added: ?I?m satisfied that we have developed a rapport about it. There needed to be more communication with the stakeholders in education about the things that were going on.

?I?m satisfied that the Minister met with us and that we were given the opportunity to question him on some of the concerns that we had. I do believe he has the best interests of the children at heart.?

Under the old WinSchool system, parents would receive an automated call if their child did not attend a class. There was also a feature which allowed parents to view their children?s attainment. Teachers have described the new system as difficult to use and warned that unreliable data could affect graduation in June.

Ms Belboda said: ?He (the Minister) has given us his firm promise that by June the system will be operational. We are going to be watchdogs.?

Ministry spokesman Ayo Johnson said: ?The Minister of Education and Development, The Honourable Terry Lister, has met with Ms Belboda today and agreed on the way forward.?