After a long weekend, the new year is here and today marks the first day when people struggle to leave the comforts of their bed to head on over to their office or to school.
But for students from this high school, they wake up to a new system implemented by their school that incorporates modern technology to monitor their attendance.
Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) Taman Desa kickstarts the year with a new digital solution that can hopefully minimise the truancy rate of students.
The school’s official Facebook posted some photos showing the fingerprint scanner devices that are placed around the school area. Students are required to scan their fingerprints before the school session starts in order to keep track of daily attendance.
Currently, there are only 6 scanners installed but the administration representative has mentioned that there may be plans to add on more in the future.
Starting from January 3, students will need to scan their fingerprint at the allocated devices before 7.15 AM for those in the morning session and before 1 PM for those in the afternoon session. After their session finishes, the students are then required to scan out at the device again before leaving the school premises.
The devices have also been separated according to gender to ease the process a bit and reduce congestion at the corridors when students are queuing to scan their fingerprints.
This decision made by the school has garnered mixed reactions from people. Some brought up the issue of whether the 6 devices are enough to sustain the volume of students while there are those who questioned the need for such a device because of how students may feel like prisoners from such a system.
Alumni from the school were also seen leaving their own comments with most of them saying how relieved they are to have missed this new system.
Although this may be a relatively new procedure for public schools in Malaysia, schools overseas have been using similar systems as early as 2001.
It’s also been a subject of heated debate, due to concerns such as privacy, identity theft and also unfair tracking of marginalised communities. It remains to be seen if this will take off in Malaysia, but right now, the mixed reaction is certainly nothing new whenever any changes are brought about.
Feature Image Credit: SMK Taman Desa Facebook