Maintaining attendance records is one of the most crucial tasks for educational institutions. In some state-run schools, attendance percentage is considered as an essential factor in the student’s final semester score. Thus, the face recognition attendance system is making life easy for administrators.
The world is witnessing a wider adoption of biometric systems in schools and colleges. Institutions are opting for better safety and surveillance. Most importantly, these systems also help in accurate attendance record keeping.
How does the system work?
Put simply, the software scans the facial features of a person from a video or photograph and then compares the same with its database for a match. Identity and information of an individual can be verified within seconds. Attendance can be marked, and access can be approved or denied accordingly.
The software is programmed to read the geometry of the person’s face. Even the distance between the chin and forehead, the distance between eyes, and other facial marks can be identified. All this is converted into a simple facial signature and stored.
Schools can feed the admission form and photos submitted with the same in the system database. Cameras can be adjusted and configured to identify students in the classroom and mark their attendance automatically.
The system is in place at several government offices, selected airports, schools, colleges, and entrances of restricted areas. By 2022, the worldwide market for this technology is set to cross the $7.7 billion mark.
Similar biometric technology is used in thumb impression attendance machines that are used by millions of schools around the world. But, fingerprint sensors in various countries are slowly being replaced with facial recognition to reduce the chances of fraud, duplication even further.
Helps in saving time and labor cost
The facial recognition system eliminates the need for students to wear a badge, mark their thumb impression, or swipe a card while entering or leaving a classroom. Besides saving time spent during waiting in a queue, it also helps in maintaining a satisfactory environment at the school. There is no need to deploy additional administrative staff for manually entering the attendance or even to assist students in marking their presence on the PC like in the early 90s.
No chance of manual errors in working hour calculation for lecturers
Facial recognition software also helps institutions in keeping track of the precise working hours for in-house as well as guest lecturers. Payroll calculation for staff and administrative employees of the organization becomes easy. There’s no chance of human mistakes or manual errors in marking working hours anymore.
Auditable and reliable attendance records for various standards can be created within minutes to comply with government regulations. It can also help in improving the cafeteria debit and accounting systems.
An additional layer of security
A biometric facial recognition system can easily integrate with other on-premise security solutions. The facial biometric tracking system also allows educational institutions to track visitors while they visit various parts of the school or college premises. Images of known criminals can be fed into the system so that the facial recognition software can deny entry to such individuals.
The initial reluctance in acceptance
Cafeteria point-of-sale systems at schools, colleges, companies are integrated with finger scanners for a decade or more. Various other forms of recognition technology have been in use since the 90s. Now, biometrics-based systems are used for delegating access to computer labs, school buses, digital libraries, and even educational material.
Students can forget access codes, or lose access cards. They can also share the same with others and make things difficult for school administration. Passwords can fail if they are not strong enough, plus, the person’s data privacy remains at risk if he or she shares the same with someone else. However, facial-recognition devices at school checkpoints are foolproof. The technology reduces the risk of data breaches and makes the overall data less vulnerable.
Even a biometric database leak would prove to be worthless for hackers. They won’t get anything else but a string of numbers that’s hard and time consuming for back-engineering. The database can be kept safe and protected even from law-enforcement agencies. They can be issued access only in case of a court order.
Facial recognition faced reluctance from many industries when it comes to acceptance during the last few years as people dislike being monitored. But, these days, everyone is willing to accept the technology when it comes to its use as a part of the automated attendance system installed at the establishment’s entrance.
Scanning barcodes or checking hard copy/e-tickets during a significant corporate event and music concert remains a tedious task. The process is considered inefficient as it takes time and human resources, as well. Experts believe the deployment of a facial recognition system can cut down inefficiencies and perform the task, grant access to guests with registered tickets within seconds. There won’t be a need to think about stolen tickets or fake tickets being issued.
Are you looking for a software firm experienced in designing a smart attendance system for schools?
You should consider discussing school management software requirements with MyEdu.
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