Jagan Gives 10 Mins Grace Period For Teachers

The Andhra Pradesh government wants to implement the face recognition attendance system in all the government offices and accordingly an app was developed. To initiate this system, the state government planned to implement this with the education department.

Subsequently the government teachers were asked to install this app in their smartphones and begin to use the face recognition feature for attendance at all government schools in AP. However the teachers union raised objections over this and last week, representatives of teachers union met education minister Botsa Satyanarayana.

The teachers union also brought the issues in the app and Botsa assured that all of them will be resolved at the earliest. Yet the teachers are concerned over this and are hesitating to use the face recognition feature for attendance.

9 AM attendance was made mandatory in this app and post the given time, it would be reckoned as absent. This feature irked the teachers and they strongly opposed this move. Sensing the teachers’ strong opposition, the YCP government has laid one step backwards and released new guidelines to ease the teachers’ fears.

Fresh set of guidelines were released on Sunday evening that included a 10 minutes grace period in case teachers fail to record attendance at 9 AM. Also if there is a network issue near the school, they can mark their attendance offline and in case of forgetting their phones at home, teachers can use their colleagues or Principal of the school’s phones to record their attendance.

The state government will bring a leave module for teachers who will go on deputation or for training purposes on duty. The details regarding the leaves of teachers, headmasters and Principals can be updated in the app.

These minor measures will partly relieve the teachers for now but there are bigger issues within the app. The AP government brought up the face recognition feature with good intentions yet it has to look into the bugs and resolve them for more transparency.