Unfazed by protests, UP govt firm on digital attendance for teachers

LUCKNOW: Unfazed by protests, the UP government remained firm on its stand to implement the digital attendance system for teachers in primary and upper primary schools. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath instructed officials to “hold discussions and develop consensus with teachers” by explaining to them the multiple benefits of this system that will ease their manual work and save time.

The basic education department conveyed this to all district level officers and asked them to motivate 6.09 lakh teachers and shiksha mitras to adhere to the government’s decision. “In case they oppose it, they might have to face consequences for disobeying the government order,” an official said.

The CM took cognizance of the online attendance progress and held a meeting with chief secretary Manoj Kumar Singh, principal secretary (basic education) MK Shanmuga Sundaram and director-general (school) Kanchan Verma on Thursday. He expressed hope that the situation will improve with better coordination amongst different stakeholders.

The chief secretary said efforts will be made to motivate teachers to make use of digitalisation process as it was aimed to bring improvement in the school education system. Principal secretary (basic education) said all possible steps will be taken to convince teachers through district level education officers.

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Adityanath told officials to bring all ‘out of school children’ to school under the School Chalo Abhiyan and inquired if all students were getting free textbooks and attending class in school uniform. He instructed that works on PM SHRI Schools be expedited and land identification for CM Composite Vidyalayas also be expedited.

All 18 assistant directors (basic), 75 district basic education officers, district coordinators and other officials will regularly visit schools from 7:30am to 10:30am for the next one week as part of a hand-holding exercise to provide required support to teachers for upkeep of digital registers, an official said.

In accordance with the government order issued regarding digitization of registers, an online review meeting was held on Thursday with officers concerned under the chairmanship of director-general (school education) Kanchan Verma. There was a detailed orientation regarding 12 digital registers and the officers were directed to implement all these digital registers.

The 12 digital registers are: Attendance register, admission register, classwise student attendance, mid-day meal attendance register, free distribution sheet, stock register, income-expenditure and cheque register, register for various meetings, inspection register, correspondence register, child census register and library and sports register.

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DG (school education) said, “Talks should be held with the representatives of the teachers’ unions regarding digital registers and they should be informed about the benefits of digital registers. Teachers should be informed about the convenience and time savings due to the use of digital registers, as there is no need to maintain manual records because digitalisation will help in preparing reports automatically and no records get lost or damaged.”

“It should also be informed that the main objective of the department is to ensure that the children acquire the required skills class-wise, subject-wise and achieve grade competency. Dedicated and coordinated efforts are necessary for this,” added the DG.