With an aim to curb absenteeism, the state government will be implementing the face recognition attendance system for government teachers from October onwards. Almost all government schools will be covered under this system by November. Vinod Rao, Principal Secretary, Education said that each school will now be given a tab, which will be used to register attendance through the face recognition system. The system was launched by the Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Teacher’s Day (September 5), however, several primary teachers association had opposed the move citing privacy concerns. The teachers association had also asked their members not to download the app onto their mobile phones. The teachers had questioned the need for the same when an online attendance system was already in place. They had also raised concerns about data being leaked to others, a fear the government had allayed stating that it isn’t sharing the same with anyone. Rao said that the teachers had a problem with downloading the application on their mobile phones since some did not have internet. “There were other issues too. So we have sorted it out by giving tablets to each school. The tablets can be used only for academic work, audio visuals, dissemination of information for teachers and for learning,” Rao added. He said each of the 40000 government school principals will have one tablet each. The tablets have been procured on a budget of Rs 25 crore and the attendance will be registered on it using the face recognition technology. The tablets are equipped with geo-tagging. The main aim of launching the systems was to curb absenteeism among teachers and students. At the time of launch, Rupani had also said that the system would soon be implemented for other departments too. Earlier, officials had said that after the online attendance began there had been a 27% rise in attendance of students and 14% of teachers across Gujarat. DATA LEAK WORRY

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