STUDENTS thinking of bunking off biology or not bothering with their maths homework are in for a shock at one school.

Because if they do, teachers at Colne Community School, in Brightlingsea, will send their parents a text message telling them about their actions.

Nearly all of the 240 Year 11 pupils at the school have agreed to be guinea pigs in the Parent Engagement Project, led by Harvard and Bristol universities.

Until next summer, four different texts will regularly be sent to parents from English, maths and science teachers at the school.

The first two will alert parents and carers to important tests and assignment deadlines coming up, along with the grades, and topics their child studied during the week.

The other two will only be sent when there is a problem – if a pupil does not hand in homework or if they keep failing to turn up to classes.

Colne was chosen to be among 37 schools in the country to take part in the research project.

Experts will then compare the GCSE grades of Year 11s at schools whose parents agreed to receive the texts, with schools whose parents did not.

The aim of the experiment is to see how well people respond to “nudges”, or prompts to take action.

Judith Wakeling, vice-principal at Colne, said: “It is great for us because we do loads of ‘interventions’ such as after school clubs and homework clubs.

“What’s really difficult for us is to identify the impact of all those things we do, so being part of a research project will identify the impact of getting parents more involved in children’s education.”

All parents and carers were emailed informing them about the research project and were given the right to withdraw if they wished.

The project has been funded by the Education Endowment Foundation, a grant-making charity dedicated to breaking the link between low family income and educational achievement.

There has been no cost to the Colne school for its involvement.

Schools in England were chosen as they keep better pupil data than American schools.

The results are due to to be publicised in spring 2016.