Govt middle schools to set up biometric attendance systems

Coimbatore: With the Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance Systems (AEBAS) for teaching and non-teaching staff members being installed at almost all government high and higher secondary schools in the district, the school education department would soon implement the system in government middle schools in the districts also.
An official of the school education department said the devices have arrived at some of the middle schools and the process is on to install the machines. “The equipment would be fit in the schools. They would be linked to the network and the schools would be mapped in the portal, after which they would become functional,” said the official.
The systems would also be installed at municipal and government-aided schools.
Meanwhile, the biometric systems were not functional at some of the government high and higher secondary schools as they have not yet been mapped in the central network, the official said. “The schools have to be mapped in the online portal by personnel in Chennai,” he said.
As the biometric system is centralised, even if they go for visit at another school, they could mark the attendance there, the official said.
Recently, the department had sent a communication to education officials in all districts asking them to mark attendance in the biometric system as there was a review meeting under the principal secretary of school education.
The department had also sent a list of the government and aided schools and education offices in the state, which were not using the biometric system. A total of five government and aided schools had featured in the list.