The UT Education Department had made promises a year back about installing tracking system for attendance in the schools in the city. A year has passed by and the work on it is still in the bud stage.
The UT Education Department had set up dummy schools for tracking the attendance of the students and the number of students who bunked schools. The aim was to keep a check on the practice of senior secondary students joining dummy government schools and devoting all their time to coaching classes. H.S Mamik, Chairperson of Vivek High School stated that much work has not been done so far even though government had set up biometric tracking system in 5 government schools in the city.
The idea was that parents will get SMS’s on their mobile phones within minutes of their ward’s activities -“Right from the morning session to activities in lunch break and after school hours, every activity of students will be monitored by the school authorities,” sources in the department disclosed. Activities of student will be uploaded on the Internal tracking systemcontrolled by the department and then subsequently the SMS’s will be sent their parents.
The idea of keeping vigilance with the assistance of the then DPI (Schools) Kamlesh Kumar, on the coaching centres also did not prove useful as these centres are their own master and do not follow any norms and rules.
The peer pressure, the thought that only a coaching centre provides good education and help the student to get good marks and the numerous coaching classes opening in every nook and corner is creating a menace. President of UT Cadre Educational Employees Union, Swarn Singh Kamboj said that all this is preventing the administration from working on the set-up of tracking system. He said that the notification passed by Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Shayin that compelled the centres to shut down before 3 pm was not followed. He stated that the tracking system should be installed in the schools at the earliest to put a stop at the malpractices of the coaching classes.
The education department is now involving the IT Department for the installation of the biometric attendance machines at the schools for both the teachers and the students in coming three months. Even though the biometrics for the teachers has been installed in some 5 schools, but it has not been linked to the main server to the Education Department.
It got mixed reactions; some appreciated it while others stated it to be a futile exercise as the department will not be able to control such a large number of students. With the large number of coaching centres and the unwavering faith of the students in them, it seems almost impossible that the government will be able to achieve the target in the coming future. The need of the hour is that strict laws should be implemented on these centres and it should be made mandatory to follow the achieved.
