Starting next month, schools of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation will be equipped with bio-metric attendance systems -- a move that will contribute significantly in ensuring students' safety.
The bio-metric systems will keep a tab on the entry and exit time of every student in the school premises and will also avert the possibility of faking attendance. Officials said that the system will start functioning from April 1 in some of the schools and soon the bio-metric system will be put in place in all schools. According to officials, biometric attendance systems have been installed in 136 of the total 592 schools in which around 4 lakh students are enrolled. Nearly 6,000 teachers are employed in these schools.
"To begin with, we have installed the biometric attendance system in West Delhi schools. We aim to cover the rest very soon," said Satish Upadhyay, chairman of the education committee in South Delhi Municipal Corporation.
He said teachers too would be asked to mark their presence with the the biometric attendance systems as would be the other staff of a school. Officials said besides improving the attendance, the bio-metric system will also improve the mid-day meal facility in schools as they would get the exact number of meals required.
Over the past few years the unified MCD had installed biometric attendance for all of its departments except for the Education Department. "In the unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), there was a plan to install biometric attendance system for teachers and non-teaching staff but due to the trifurcation, it got delayed. Now, we'll be introducing the system for both - staff and students," the officers added.
The biometric attendance is also directly linked to the salary which means teachers who remain absent from schools without prior permission will face a salary cut.
In October last year, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation had become the first civic body in Delhi to have biometric attendance systems in its schools.