Telangana GJCs adopt facial recognition for attendance from Saturday

The Intermediate Education department will roll out a Facial Recognition System in all 430 Government Junior Colleges from Saturday, replacing roll calls and biometrics. Covering 1.80 lakh students, the system alerts parents via SMS or WhatsApp if their child is absent

Hyderabad: There will be no more roll calls in Government Junior Colleges (GJCs) from Saturday, as the Intermediate Education department is set to launch a Facial Recognition System (FRS) for capturing students’ attendance.

In a move to tackle absenteeism among students, the department is introducing the FRS, replacing the biometric and manual attendance systems that have been in practice until now. Apart from students, the new system will also record teaching and non-teaching staff attendance.

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A key feature of the FRS is that it alerts parents if their ward fails to turn up at college. Messages will be sent via WhatsApp or SMS to the registered mobile number. The move comes after it was observed that, on average, 40 per cent of students skipped college during the last academic year.

Before taking attendance through photographs, colleges must first register students’ credentials, along with their photographs, in the FRS application.

After marking his/her attendance through a selfie photograph via the FRS application on smartphones, a lecturer will take a long shot of the students in the classroom. The photograph captured will be validated with registered details and synchronised with geo-coordinates, thereby marking attendance.

The system will be rolled out in all 430 government junior colleges, covering 1.80 lakh students along with teaching and non-teaching staff.

Currently, as biometric devices went defunct, GJCs reverted to the age-old practice of recording attendance in registers. However, biometric-based attendance continues for teaching and non-teaching staff.

“We will be launching the FRS system for recording both students’ and teachers’ attendance from Saturday. The FRS attendance will be registered twice a day, i.e., morning and afternoon. The idea is to ensure students attend college regularly,” Intermediate Education department Director S Krishna Aditya told Telangana Today.