Face recognition system for school attendance

The face of each child would be shown before a camera installed at entrance of the classrooms. The system would automatically scan it and mark attendance.

For monitoring the attendance of students in municipal schools in east Delhi, the civic agency is considering the use of Automatic Face Recognition (AFR) technology.

The system is a part of biometric attendance system and is already been in use at government schools in Telangana, said officials from East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC).

“As per the technique, the face of each child would be shown before a camera installed at the entrance of the classrooms. The system would automatically scan it and mark attendance. The cameras would be attached to the server and all information gathered would be collected at one place,” said Yoginder Singh Maan, EDMC spokesperson.

According to him, the collected data can be easily accessed by school principals, who can check at any point of time the number of students present in the school on any given day.

A group of officials from education department will soon visit the schools in Telangana and figure out the success rate and time consumed in marking attendance through this system. Following this, the technology will be installed in a few schools on a pilot basis. An estimated number of two lakh students study in the 398 schools under EDMC.

An official from IT department said, “Using the thumb impression for marking attendance is not feasible considering the skin of young children change frequently. In comparison, using their face will take a few seconds.”

At present, teachers in EDMC schools are marking students’ attendance in registers. “But this is a manual process and can result in error. Also, the chances of marking bogus attendance can also be checked through this technology.It will bring transparency in education departments,” said an official.

During a survey conducted by the department, it was found that 26,000 students remained absent for two years, at different points of time.

“The process took a lot of time as we had to go through record books,” said an official.

However, there are officials who believe that school teachers should be scanned using this technology.

“It will not only ensure the presence of teachers in schools, but also help in finding the number of hours they have worked,” said a senior official o condition of anonymity.