Students have always been notorious for misbehaving and skipping school. Cases of students climbing fences or making excuses have been no stranger to parents or teachers in Malaysia. In efforts to reduce this act of ponteng sekolah, a school in Johor decided to lend a helping hand. Or rather a finger!
Source: Facebook
Ajar Malaysia has reported that SMK Bandar Tenggara is now using a fingerprint scanner to keep track of their students’ attendance. It is the first school in Johor to apply a biometric system into their day-to-day routine. Wah, so canggih!
“This system was introduced for us to achieve the attendance KPI of 95%,” said SMK Bandar Tenggara principal, Noraini Mohd Nor.
Source: Facebook
Source: Facebook
Every day, students scan their fingers at the terminals to confirm their attendance in school. This information would then be linked to the Pepatih MySekolah app, where teachers and parents can monitor their attendance. One parent said,
“From the app, I can see what time my child arrives at school.”
“Especially if my child is riding a motorcycle, I can know if he reaches the school or not.”
Source: Sekolah Malaysia
The Pepatih MySekolah app is not limited to just checking if a student is punctual in attending school or not. The app also displays a student’s attendance for co-curricular activities and examination results.
This school tested out the system in October 2018 and started officially implementing it this year. With the biometric scanner, teachers are also less burdened as they do not need to manually account for the students’ attendance anymore. Parents are asked to pay a sum of RM15 for this and the cost is actually per family and not per student. The download of the application, however, is free.
I guess now parents would not have to put a finger on why their kids are skipping school anymore.
Also read: M’sian Teacher Ponteng School for 8 Months, Gets Sued By Student After Entire Class Fails Exam
