The Indian education department of Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki district has asked all government school teachers to send their selfies to mark their attendance. The system is expected to reach other parts of the state later on.
From today onwards, No written or biometric attendance… India has shifted to a new way of verifying governmental school teachers’ attendance. After the orders of the education board officials, all government school teachers of Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki district would now have to record their attendance by:
“Taking a selfie in front of their classrooms, and forward this selfie to the government allotted number. ”
Under this new system, every teacher would have to take a selfie in front of their classroom and forward it to the education department before 8 am. Any teacher who fails to upload and send their selfie by the stipulated time will face a deduction of one day’s salary.
Why Government Implemented “Teacher Selfie-Attendance System” in Uttar Pradesh?
Recording attendance with a selfie sounds surprising – but according to the district’s education officials, they had to implement this system to smash the racket of ghost teachers.
The education department officials have said:
“In Uttar Pradesh’s government schools, it has become a common practice of government-hired teachers to ‘sub-let’ their jobs to under-qualified persons who not only mark their attendance but also teach students.
These government teachers hire under-qualified teachers and give them a short portion of their salary while enjoying their own salaries sitting at home. This practice has become common, and the whole school administration is involved in this illegal practice – who also get a share of the money to keep each other’s secrets.”
The official further added that the Chief Minister is deeply concerned over this issue, and so we have decided to implement this selfie-attendance system for the teachers.
“The whole system is exclusively carried out in accordance with the instructions of the Chief Minister and the Minister of Education. Teachers were told that they would miss the wage of the day if they did not post their selfies before 8 a.m. We will soon spread this system to other districts as well.”
Teachers of Uttar Pradesh, however, are unhappy with this new attendance system. They say that uploading and sending selfies with their classroom before 8 am is difficult for them because sometimes they are unable to reach school before 8 – because of the traffic jams.