Hyderabad: Private school teachers pitch for biometric attendance system

Hyderabad: As the Telangana government recently issued orders that all the higher education institutions in the State must mandatorily implement Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance for students, teachers, and non-teaching staff, private school teachers have raise questions as to why this system is not made compulsory in schools. School teachers have also urged the government to implement the same in all the schools.

Few private schools have a biometric attendance system but it has not been linked with the education department and the school managements have installed the device for their own benefit and not for the betterment of the teachers, pointed of few teachers.

Bhaskar Rao, a private school teacher said, "Implementing biometric attendance in all the higher education institutions is a good initiative but why is it not been implemented in schools. In most of private schools, the management is appointing unqualified teachers and are not maintaining staff attendance registers to avoid income tax issues. In this case, many genuine private teachers are deprived of various schemes implemented by the State government as the schools are unable to show the documents. It will be easy to get the attendance details of teachers and students if biometrics are installed in schools."

On the condition of anonymity, a private school teacher said, "I have not seen any attendance registers in my school nor I have signed in some book for attendance. Biometrics will help in keeping a record of attendance detains of teachers and management. The schools which have biometric systems are not linked to the education department. Only if it is linked with the department then only the school management will maintain a record.

Shabbir Ali, president of Telangana Private Teachers' Forum, said, "If biometric systems are implemented in schools only then it will be useful for the teacher's welfare, as qualified teachers will be appointed in the schools. Hence, we request the State government to make the biometric system compulsory in all the schools."