South Delhi Municipal Corporation schools to get biometrics for attendance, lunch payments

Biometric attendance systems will be installed in schools of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation in April of this year, in a move to ensure student safety.

The biometric attendance systems will keep track of the entry and exit time of every student, and will help to mitigate false attendance. The biometric system will also help improve the mid-day meal program in schools as they will be able to obtain the exact number of meals required.

According to a report by the Daily Pioneer, biometric attendance systems have been installed in 136 of the total 592 schools in New Delhi so far to keep track of the 400,000 students enrolled.

“To begin with, we have installed the biometric attendance system in West Delhi schools. We aim to cover the rest very soon,” Satish Upadhyay, chairman of the education committee in South Delhi Municipal Corporation said.

Soon, the nearly 6,000 teachers employed at the schools will also be required to mark their presence with the biometric attendance systems. The system will be directly linked to their salary, meaning if a teacher is absent from school without prior permission, he or she will face a salary cut.

Many schools in various regions of the world are looking to install biometric attendance systems or have done so recently. These systems are typically for teacher attendance, student attendance or student payment systems. In some cases deployments are successful, but in others they are met with resistance.

Reported in BiometricUpdate.com, the Greater Egg Harbor Regional High School District in New Jersey is set to install a biometric fingerprint payment system for students to purchase lunch.

Reported previously, a similar system is being debated, and a proposed Senate bill could see the collection of biometrics from school children in Maryland banned.

Teachers in government schools in India’s Andhra Pradesh threatened to strike against a proposed biometric workforce management system. Also in India, faculty at Vinoba Bhave University have rejected similar plans and have vowed to oppose the new system. 

The Department of Basic Education in South Africa has plans for a massive project that would see 24,000 schools equipped with biometric verification devices, though these are primarily intended to curb teacher absenteeism.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  fingerprint  |  thumbprint  |  time and attendance  |  workforce management