A major school district in India is implementing a biometric time and attendance tracking system for its teachers, according to an article in The Times of India. The Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation school board’s decision will affect 134 primary schools with the start of the new school year in June.
As with so many time and attendance system deployments, the biometric upgrade is seen as a means of cutting down on absenteeism and improving administrative efficiency. Dhananjay Bhalekar, the PCMC board’s chairman, said the system was meant to address “complaints of teachers leaving school for personal work and neglecting their teaching duties,” but he also added that “it will prevent the delay in salary payments to teachers.” The system has so far been installed in about 80 schools in the district, and work is ongoing to meet the project deadline in June.
It’s a somewhat similar project to one recently initiated in Saudi Arabia, whose Ministry of Education is seeking to implement a biometric attendance tracking system in schools across the country. That country has also been working on a national biometric registry of citizens, much like India, whose Aadhaar initiative is likely the biggest and most ambitious national biometrics program in the world. As the country gets used to monitoring government officials with this kind of technology, it seems a natural step that biometric attendance tracking would find its way into the school system too.
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April 20, 2015 by Alex Perala
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