Teachers claim that significant instructional time is lost on some days
Students must line up after school begins for individual facial scans, and in classes with 40 to 60 students, the process can be time-consuming. Koppal : The state govt’s Niranthara app, introduced to record student attendance through facial recognition, is drawing criticism from teachers and school development and monitoring committees (SDMCs) across Kalyana Karnataka. Teachers claim that significant instructional time is lost on some days. “If the lighting is poor or a child moves slightly, the system rejects the scan, forcing us to repeat the process while valuable teaching time is lost.
Teachers in Koppal, Vijayanagara, Raichur and Ballari districts said the system is consuming valuable classroom time and adding to their workload. “We are spending the first hour of every day just trying to get the app to recognise the children,” said a govt primary school teacher from Koppal district. Teachers said attendance records cannot always be uploaded when networks are unavailable or servers become unresponsive, affecting teaching, student assessment and other academic responsibilities.
Poor internet connectivity and server issues in rural areas have further compounded the problem. The glitches have also raised concerns over the midday meal and egg distribution schemes, as beneficiary numbers are linked to daily attendance. School staff fear inaccurate attendance records could affect food supplies. Teachers and SDMC members have urged the education department to address the technical issues and introduce a reliable offline-sync feature or a dual-tracking mechanism to minimise disruptions. They argue that digitisation should not come at the cost of classroom teaching or student nutrition.