“Reducing the timing of it’s operation for recording the attendance of teachers in the morning from one hour to just 10 minutes post scheduled reporting time, Say 10.00 A.M or 10.30 A. M conveys a message that the digital attendance system has been put in place just for harassment of teachers and not for furthering the causes of their classroom accountability”.
Attendance for the sake of attendance but not for accountability in furtherance of the bigger causes of quality teaching if continued blindly without looking into it’s advantages and disadvantages won’t change the public perception about the standards of teaching-learning practices and procedures at Govt Schools in Jammu & Kashmir. Though introduction of digital attendance system is a path breaking initiative to further the causes of punctuality of teachers at Govt Schools, but reducing the timing of it’s operation for recording the attendance of teachers in the morning from one hour to just 10 minutes post scheduled reporting time, Say 10.00 A.M or 10.30 A. M conveys a message that the digital attendance system has been put in place just for harassment of teachers and not for furthering the causes of their classroom accountability. What merits a mention here is the fact that with School Education Department deciding to close the digital attendance app hardly ten minutes after the fixed reporting time , Say 10.00 A. Or 10.30 A.M the teachers for the fear of being marked late would prefer to avail the leave instead of coming to the school and report classrooms for teaching the students and this way students of not less than three classes would loose one precious day of teaching. On the contrary keeping the digital attendance app open for atleast one hour after the fixed reporting time, Say 10.00 A. Or 10.30 A.M for recording the attendance of teachers would by all standards of understandabilities encourage them to report their classrooms for teaching the students even if they arrive school late by 10-30 minutes for one or the other reason on one or the other day.
“if at all Government has developed a perception that teachers reporting late in the morning by 15-30 minutes if punished once or twice won’t dare to do so and such a practice would improve the performance of Government schools , it would be much better for the Government to review the transfer policy for teachers of all categories and classes for the purposes of their posting nearest to their places of present residence as reducing the travelling time for teachers would ultimately leave no scopes for them to report late at their places of posting”.
What deserves the attention and intervention of the Government is the fact that while the performance of Government Schools has not improved despite increased punctuality of teachers through digital attendance system during last three years, the performance of private schools has unprecedentedly improved during the same period despite relying on physical attendance of teachers as per past conventional practice. So what matters is the class room performance of teachers for which there is no foolproof accountability in Government schools. Now if at all Government has developed a perception that teachers reporting late in the morning by 15-30 minutes if punished once or twice won’t dare to do so and such a practice would improve the performance of Government schools , it would be much better for the Government to review the transfer policy for teachers of all categories and classes for the purposes of their posting nearest to their places of present residence as reducing the travelling time for teachers would ultimately leave no scopes for them to report late at their places of posting. Changing the morning timing for running the digital attendance app or amending the transfer policy of teachers of all classes and categories are the only two options for furthering the causes of punctuality of teachers in Government Schools and it is for the Government to take care of the conveniences of the teachers instead of increasing their inconveniences at the cost of classroom teaching .
