Lucknow: In a move to bring down drop out rate and improve attendance, the Uttar Pradesh government has decided to introduce biometric attendance systems in primary classes.
The State Basic Education Minister Satish Dwivedi was quoted by news agency IANS as saying students can put their thumb impressions between 8 AM and 1 PM.
He said the move will ensure transparency in the attendance process and weed out anomalies such as bogus and inflated enrolment.
As per the IANS report, there are roughly 1.5 lakh primary schools in UP and the technology will be rolled out within six months.
“The number of students enrolled in primary schools is huge, so we have kept the timing flexible. The Panchayati Raj Department will ensure the effective working of the biometric system,” Dwivedi said.
Uttar Pradesh will join a handful of states like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Delhi where the biometric system has been implemented in government schools with a fair degree of success.
The system is already in place in several private schools across the country.
The UP government will also cover the education as well as non-education staff under the initiative to ensure regular conduct of classes and greater student-teacher interface.