App-based attendance planned for students in govt schools

Mangaluru: The govt of Karnataka is planning to introduce an app-based attendance system in govt and aided schools for students, starting from the next academic year. The department of school education and literacy has already completed pilot projects in one govt school of every district, which has shown promising results. The education department is now eager to expand the project to all schools in the state.
The main objective of implementing the app-based attendance system is to increase student attendance and improve the quality of education. Currently, students from grades one to nine are not allowed to fail, but those with less than 75% attendance in SSLC are not permitted to sit for exams. The lack of strict attendance measures until grade nine often leads to students neglecting their attendance, which continues into SSLC.
"As a result, thousands of students are deprived of writing the SSLC exam. Therefore, marking attendance through the app will be useful in continuous monitoring and mentoring those students who remain absent," said a senior official.
The app-based attendance system also offers benefits for govt schemes. The current Student Achievement Tracking System (SATS) has many shortcomings, including discrepancies between the number of students enrolled and the number of students attending school. With the app-based system, real-time attendance data can be obtained, along with precise information about the benefits provided by the government to school children. The department is working to fully implement the system from the next academic year, pending government approval.
Ritesh Kumar Singh, principal secretary of the department of school education and literacy, confirmed the success of the app-based attendance experiment.
"The education minister has taken a special interest in implementing this project. Additionally, there are discussions within the education department about collecting teachers' attendance through the app or biometrics and implementing a geo-fencing system for them as well," he said.
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Overview of schools in state
Number of govt schools: 47,276
Number of aided schools: 6,479
Number of unaided schools: 17,167