His belief in this value has led him to lend his name in championing Groupcall, a distinctly modern-age piece of technology developed by husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Joanne and Lawrence Royston. The system sends text messages to parents, and lets them know if their child is absent from school.
"I'm a very pragmatic person and it was clear to me when I saw the empiricism of this," Geldof says. "I don't just mean for education, I mean for awareness as well. When I heard about it, one of my girls had just started going to school across London. I didn't want her travelling all the way there without knowing that she'd arrived safely. That's dads for you."
The founders of Groupcall claim the system helps reduce truancy, by informing parents if their children have not attended school.
"Attendance figures in Britain are fairly high but it's the persistence that's troubling," Geldof says. "It's a cliche but if you don't have the tools to operate in the modern world you are going to fail all your life. That's a very dull message to a kid who can't be arsed to go to school, but the problem is, that's unlikely to rectify itself through that individual's life."
Cracking down on truancy must start early if it is to have any effect, Geldof says. "The focus must be on primary education. So far it's been on secondary but it's got to shift. There has been an increase of seven per cent in primary truancy figures.
"Eight-year-olds don't voluntarily miss school, so there's usually something else going on. It's done with parental collusion. The reason is usually low-income groups, societal pressure, the one-parent thing, so the parent needs help.
"It could be too much hassle getting everyone up and ready for school, or it could be their clothes aren't clean so there's social embarrassment, or it could be a day where you come in wearing jeans but you have to pay £1, and they don't have £1. And then there's just feckless parenting."
Feckless parenting is something Geldof himself has been accused of in the past, particularly when his daughter Peaches hit gossip pages for going out partying during her A-Levels, but he simply says "I don't talk about that stuff".
What he does talk about is poverty. Geldof is of course more famous for Band Aid and his work with the Make Poverty History campaign than he is as frontman of the Boomtown Rats. "Poverty is relative. Having a car and a fridge and a TV doesn't mean that your satisfaction with life is growing," he says.
"There are cases when the wealth of a country doesn't seem to have brought up the happiness of that society. Wealth does make you happy apparently but it's a certain amount of money - 8,000 Euros (£6,000) is the point at which you feel relatively comfortable, as a global mean. Beyond that you start to drop into dissatisfaction."
This aside, he agrees with child poverty campaigners that more money should be made available to tackle the problem.
"I think there will always be poverty," he says. "The experts are probably right to say the government should give £4 billion to help alleviate child poverty, but I would say it's not just material progress but mental and spiritual progress too.
"Even with £4bn, if a parent doesn't see the benefit of going to school, that money isn't going to help.
"We are the fourth richest country in the world - do we feel that? No, we don't. Are our services in line with that? Probably. So why is there this problem? We are probably led to believe poverty should always be there, but that doesn't mean it need always be there."
BACKGROUND GROUPCALL
- Groupcall's Messenger system is currently in use in around 1,000 primary and secondary schools in the UK
- Absences can be investigated quickly to ensure they are genuine and known about by parents
- Founders say it helps in the monitoring and reduction of truancy, improves the flow of communication between schools and parents, and ensures absences are recognised earlier, improving the safety of pupils
- It can also be used to contact all or groups of parents in the event of an emergency or change to the school day
- www.groupcall.co.uk.
