To curb absenteeism, schools to have biometric attendance

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, January 6

To start biometric online attendance system at all 19,000 government primary, middle, high and senior secondary schools in the state, the School Education Department has asked all district and block-level education officers to ensure proper supply and installation of these machines in the schools falling under their jurisdiction.

In the first phase, these machines will be installed at all 12,850 government primary schools, followed by 2,660 middle, 1,738 high and 1,871 senior secondary schools in the state.

There will be no manual attendance register in the schools from April 1. The process of supply of machines will begin in the next 10 days, reads a letter written by the Director, School Education Department, to all District Education Officers (DEOs) and Block Primary Education Officers (BPEO).

“Believing that the biometric will offer a scalable solution to government schools in circumventing issues like absenteeism and delayed arrival of teaching and non-teaching staff, replacing the conventional time-tracking system with modern-day attendance system is the need of the hour,” said a senior functionary in the department.

The system will help the department in monitoring and managing the clock-in and clock-out time of the school staff. “We are hopeful that this biometric-based school attendance system helps the government in boosting quality education, improving punctuality of teachers, strengthening student admissions in government schools and real-time attendance monitoring of the teaching/non-teaching staff,” he added.

Fearing that school employees may tamper with the machines, the Director, School Education Department, has conveyed to the district and block education officers that though the company installing these machines was responsible for the maintenance of these machines for four-year period, in case the machines were lost, damaged or these were found tampered intentionally, then school heads will be responsible for purchasing a new machine.

“Once the machine is installed, the school staff will begin making online biometric attendance,” reads the Director’s letter to all DEOs and BPEO.

If there is any problem with the machine, the school will immediately inform its BPEO and the latter will further convey the district coordinator and the head office to replace the machine.

The BPEO will be responsible for 100 per cent online attendance of all employees in his/her jurisdiction and the DEOs will keep reviewing the working of this online attendance system.