Two campuses trial facial recognition

Facial recognition is being trialled to monitor student attendance at two New Zealand tertiary providers.

And the New Zealand Principals Federation said its future in schools would not come as a surprise.

The $150,000-plus experiment, run by Aware Group in conjunction with the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), will wrap up at the North and South Island campuses in about three weeks.

The artificial intelligence (AI) tracks the arrival and departure of students and uploads the data into attendance records which could be used by the Ministry of Education (MoE), parents, and caregivers to monitor ‘‘safety and truancy’’ in real time.

CEO Brandon Hutcheson would not confirm which institutions had used the technology but expected it to lead to talks with the Ministry over its future in the education sector, and that could include schools.

Hutcheson said the technology

would help address the growing issue of truancy and its associated costs including policing, social services and the courts. Knowing which students were absent could help redirect support to those who needed it – such as Ma¯ ori and Pasifika communities.

Principals’ Federation president Whetu Cormick said facial recognition technology was not a far-fetched concept for schools as most education providers had moved away from paper-rolls and used self-sign-in systems.

However, he said it would not change truancy trends as absence often related to mental health, poverty issues and disengagement with schools.

He was concerned adults’ ability to constantly monitor students’ movements was a form of putting children in cotton wool but admitted technology would continue to be developed to include AI.

Cormick knew of trials where schools could monitor children’s movements through GPSactivated watches but questioned if the use of such technologies would turn us into a ‘‘risk averse society’’.

There would also need to be strong systems in place over how that data was shared, Cormick said.

Victoria University of Wellington software engineering senior lecturer Simon McCallum said while technology could be efficient, it could also lead to a loss in social interactions – to answer your name gave teachers information about how a student was feeling.

Humans would always work to ‘‘cheat the system’’ which McCallum said would likely work in the same way Facebook used facial recognition to offer tagging suggestions in photographs.

‘‘You’re unlikely to be 100 per cent perfect,’’ but if funding decisions were made on a fooled system ‘‘you might miss things’’.

Hutcheson said student consent at primary, intermediate and secondary levels would be considered during consultation with the Ministry, boards of trustees, teachers, parents and students.

Students involved in the tertiary trial had signed consent forms, Hutcheson added.

Education providers in Indonesia and Singapore had also been approached to use the technology.

Hutcheson is to present at the artificial intelligence conference: AI DAY, to be held at Auckland’s ASB Waterfront Theatre from today.

The technology would help address the growing issue of truancy and its associated costs including policing, social services and the courts.

Brandon Hutcheson