Challenges of electronic attendance marking in Schools in 2020

 

Can we place sensors on children to track their arrives and departures from school, with some kind of airport scanning machine to track and record their constant whereabouts, maybe with GPS so if they leave the schools grounds before the end of the day or without approval a push notification is sent to school staff to chase them down and bring them back to class? Not at the moment is the answer, as moral and ethical questions and concerns are raised.

But other less controversial technology software is entering the school space to assist schools in meeting their attendance compliances. Fingerprint recognition is the most, oldest, simplest to install, and the lowest cost biometric technology in schools. Although palm vein recognition, iris recognition and face recognition have been implemented in schools, finger scanning is by far the most commonly used technology education market. Student ID cards with RFID or Bar codes have long been used. One of the main concerns with Biometrics In Schools is the use of storage of the data captured, how is it stored where and for how long.

School Attendance tracking is important for students, employees, parents and members of the larger community, so what mechanisms in schools put in place to effectively and efficiently capture school attendance. One is a fast easy to access and understand the electronic register. Many software providers provide attendance software that brings many benefits includes

 

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  School electronic attendance marking software in Australia and international schools

   

  Accuracy, teachers are responsible for identifying the student’s attendance and marking effectively within the system

• Time, the class list can be pre-populated from a timetable, LMS or School Management System, saving all staff the admin load to make sure the correct students are populated.
• Flexibility, the ability to track attendance marking cross the score in the real-time offers greater flexibility with real-time reporting.
• Alerts, time saved saves school administration resources ith many options for automated alerts to be sent out by text message.
• Government reporting and compliance, access to your school attendance information often build into your Stduenten information systems or linked can  save a large time and cost in meeting government reporting a compliance requirements

Challenges

There is no denying that many advantages can be gained from electronic attendance software but also disadvantages and Challenges that school need to meet.

• The training required to educate teachers on using the new system and a different way of working
• Setting up the electronic software so is working as seamlessly as possible, i.e configuring  3rd party software all to talk to each other to be able to populate a class list with relevant students.
• Accessing real-time reporting in the event of a shutdown or disaster scenario. Traditionally in a shutdown or an emergency situation paper attendance records would be brought out and handed out to staff to double-check all student numbers. Schools need to plan on how to achieve this similar level of response. Many Software Vendors have solutions or practices in place to offer schools to meet these requirements.
• School Data, School must make sure that data is kept on the student’s file until seven years after the student has left. In the case of a student who has had an accident necessitating an accident report, the record should be retained until the student reaches the age of 25 year
• Australian secondary schools, a record of the attendance at each lesson, to be retained until the end of the school year
• Attendance Register (roll), to be retained for three years. In a case where a student has an accident requiring an accident report, all attendance records should be retained until the year the student reaches the age of 25 years
• Attendance written notes, records of verbal explanations and records of electronic explanations for absences from parents. This advice is to be retained for two years from the date of receipt
• Attendance registers (rolls) must be maintained on all days on which the school is open for instruction including school sports days, swimming carnivals, excursions and similar events

Regular attendance at school for every student is essential if students are to achieve their potential and increase their career and life options. Schools in partnerships with parents are responsible for promoting the regular attendance of students.