The West Bengal School Education Department plans to introduce an AI-based system to record student attendance in government and government-aided schools across the state.

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The proposed system will use facial recognition technology to identify students and automatically mark attendance, replacing the current practice of calling out names and maintaining attendance registers.

Sources say the pilot project will include 100 government and government-aided schools.

The system is expected to be introduced on a trial basis after schools reopen following the Puja vacation. If the pilot phase proves successful, the department is targeting a statewide rollout from January next year.

Under the proposed system, teachers will use a dedicated mobile application to record attendance. After entering a classroom, a teacher will have to take a photograph of the students present.

The app will then analyse the image using AI-powered facial recognition technology to identify individual students.

The app will match the faces in the photograph against a database of students' photographs and identification details, created before the system is introduced.

Based on this process, the application will automatically generate a list of students present in the classroom and identify those who are absent.

The department believes the technology will reduce the time teachers spend taking attendance, particularly in classrooms with large numbers of students. Currently, teachers call out students' names or roll numbers individually and record their presence in attendance registers, a process that can take up a considerable portion of classroom time.

The proposed digital system is also expected to make attendance records easier to maintain and access. The department aims to use the data to monitor students' attendance percentages, regularity in attending school and absenteeism.

The initial implementation across 100 schools will help the department assess the system's effectiveness before considering expansion statewide. The department plans a statewide rollout in January, subject to the pilot project's outcome.