Leveraging RFID and
Biometric-Based Attendance Systems to Minimize Absenteeism

The purpose of educational institutes is far beyond imparting high-quality education; it is also responsible for students’ overall development. Therefore, monitoring their activities is crucial to determining their progress.

Maintaining an accurate attendance system is equally important, allowing the teacher to assess students' attendance patterns. The paper-based methods are irrelevant and have been replaced by modern attendance management system, which automates the manual process effortlessly.

What is the Modern Attendance Management System?

The manual roll-calling process of students is the traditional way of conducting attendance, which is the primary activity before the start of the class. It is time-consuming, but with the rise of technological integrations, institutes no longer need to rely on such outdated methods.

One of the most crucial developments in recent times has been the biometric attendance software, which allows institutes to authenticate and verify an individual’s identity. The identification verification process is particularly unique.

In fact, it is a modern attendance management system that uses unique physical or behavioural traits. For instance, the system uses fingerprints, facial features, iris patterns, palm prints, voice recognition techniques, and DNA sequences.

But is it possible to reduce absenteeism with the help of a biometric-based attendance system? Let us find out:

1. Accurate Attendance Recording

What are the chances of the teacher making a mistake in marking an error while roll-calling? Despite paying close attendance while recording the attendance of students, teachers might make an error.

Also, while tallying the number of absent and present days of each student, mistakes might occur due to hurriedness or miscalculation. As a result, it leads to inaccurate student record information.

On the contrary, the RFID-based attendance system automates the attendance tracking process and facilitates the following:

• It ensures accurate attendance tracking.
• It replaces the conventional paper-based procedures like recording the attendance on registers.
• The automated technology links the biological traits of individuals as a means of identity authentication, helping to avoid errors or mistaken identities.
• Teachers and admin can access real-time attendance reports and analytics.
• By accessing and maintaining accurate student attendance reports, teachers can identify frequent absentees and take appropriate actions.

2. Maintaining Attendance Integrity

Helping friends or classmates during exams is as common as marking them present, also known as buddy punching. This is an example of malpractice often occurring in colleges, affecting the attendance record's authenticity.

Institutes strive to prevent such activities by implementing certain rules, such as declaring 70 to 80 per cent attendance mandatory for students. Unfortunately, that does not stop certain students from practising buddy punching.

Fortunately, institutes can eliminate the practice effectively with the help of biometric attendance software, which records the biological traits of students. Besides, given that such traits are distinctively different, students cannot buddy punch.

Whether it is through fingerprint scanning, iris patterns, or facial recognition, the system ensures the integrity of the attendance record.

3. Identifying At-risk Students

Which students are frequent absentees? What is the retention rate of a particular batch of students? These questions are critical to assessing the class's overall performance as they contribute to the institutional performance.

The traditional attendance system cannot answer these questions because it provides a very basic mode of recording students’ attendance. On the other hand, using an online attendance system has diverse advantages, such as:

• It provides an automated mechanism to record and maintain attendance, saving time and effort.
• It helps to identify the number of students who frequently remain absent and miss classes.
• Absent students are more likely to drop out of schools/colleges for various reasons; therefore, teachers can identify their attendance patterns early on.
• The software has an in-built reporting and analytics system, helping teachers to get accurate attendance reports.
• Real-time access to such reports allows teachers to identify absentees and take appropriate measures to help retain at-risk students.

4. Assured Security and Student Retention

Technology-related solutions often come with questions concerning security, especially when cyber crimes and online security threats are prevalent. Fortunately, educational institutes do not have to worry about such issues.

Advanced ed-tech solutions enable institutes to integrate access control measures seamlessly with the attendance system. As a result, it creates a comprehensive security solution, facilitating access to authorised personnel.

Simultaneously, assured security ensures that the attendance record remains intact, helping to determine frequent absentees. Moreover, they get a detailed report about the time since they started missing the classes.

5. Greater Attention on Students

When a considerable amount of time and effort goes into recording and maintaining student attendance, it becomes difficult to pay attention to students. Besides, teachers always have to deal with multiple responsibilities.

In fact, administrative activities related to teaching and learning, like preparing lesson plans and questionnaires, often take up excess time. One can say the same thing regarding the maintenance of manual attendance registers.

However, they can eliminate time-consuming and repetitive processes with the help of the automated system. For example, QR attendance software is emerging as a popular attendance system, allowing for tracking, managing and reporting student attendance effortlessly.

Hence, teachers can effectively utilise time by focusing on students' performance and determining their weak and strong areas. Likewise, they can focus on low-performing students who usually remain absent.

6. Increases Responsibility among Students

Teachers and institutes strive to do their best and facilitate effective strategies to ensure engaging classroom sessions. Therefore, it is only fitting that students must follow their obligations and perform accordingly.

Unfortunately, that does not always happen; students tend to miss classes even with no justifiable reasons. There have been instances of voluntarily not attending school/college as the student would rather spend time with friends.

However, the institute can highlight the importance of maintaining regular attendance with the RFID Student attendance management system. Besides, maintaining a certain attendance percentage is integral to the academic system.

Hence, when teachers/admin inform particular students about their attendance report, it will make them feel accountable. Furthermore, they will understand the necessity of below-average attendance reports and ensure they do not remain absent.