Bengal schools rein in truant kids with radio tags

NADIA: Three schools in Bengal’s districts, two of them in rural areas, have controlled the menace of truancy by employing Radio Frequency Identification tags that register presence of students the moment they pass in front of a reader device at the gates that sends alerts to their guardians about their movement.

Two schools are in the rural belts of Nadia and Bankura districts while the third one is in Burdwan town. The cards hang from the necks of students. All movements in and out of the gate are registered and parents get to know it instantly. The company that has installed the technology has embellished the offering with a phone-based app that gives details of homework of students to their parents.

The use of RFID cards in schools, both governmentfunded and private, was unheard of in Bengal. The state government, however, has set up biometric attendance systems for doctors in hospitals and employees in some departments to improve attendance.

Though the school authorities don’t have statistics of truancy before the system was installed, they told HT it is a common malaise in the state and they have been able to eliminate it with the help of technology. The system has a collateral benefit — the time lost in roll call of students is utilised in studies as the system produces the attendance data. “The menace of truancy has vanished. It’s a foolproof system,” Ratan Sarkar, secretary of St Peters English School in Nadia’s Krishnaganj, told HT.

Concurred acharya Satyanisthananda of Durlabhpur Anandamarg School in Bankura district. “The technology has effectively dealt with this problem. Parents get to know real time if students are attending school and when they are leaving,” he told HT.

The attendance system was installed in June 2016. The addons for homework and notification were done last month.

“The guardians are happy with the system. While it takes care of the truancy factor, guardians also don’t ned to network for homework details if any student remains absent. They get it on phone automatically. They also get all notifications from me,” added Sarkar.

“We adopted the system in January 2017 and the guardians are satisfied. We take ₹450 per student annually to part-finance the system. The system costs ₹800 per student,” said Acharya Kritatma Nanda Avadhut, principal of Burdwan Anandamarg School that has installed the system. The school has 650 students.

STUDENTS’ MOVEMENTS IN AND OUT OF SCHOOL ARE REGISTERED AND THE PARENTS GET TO KNOW ABOUT THEM IN AN INSTANT