Manama: A school in Saudi Arabia has resorted to fingerprinting to monitor the attendance of its students.
Mohammad Al Fateh Middle School in the western area of Taef is the first school in the kingdom to adopt the fingerprinting system for students.
“We decided to use modern technology to check and follow the commitment of our students to school attendance,” the management said. “We have had the approval of the education district and its general director Mohammad Al Shamrani launched the project,” the management said in remarks carried by local daily Al Sharq on Thursday.
The fingerprinting system allows parents to be updated about the arrival and departures of their sons via messages sent to their mobile phones.
Students in each of the classes in the school will have access to three machines to have their fingerprints scanned.
The school will also install 24 cameras to monitor the movements of the students and act promptly in case of misbehaviour or troublemaking situations, the management said.
The school is attended by 400 students.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have been pushing for measures to curb rising levels of absenteeism and tardiness among students, especially in middle and high schools, after they reached alarming levels.
In October last year, Kuwait decided to use class attendance to determine students’ grades.
Under the decision, students who do not present valid excuses for missing classes are punished by having their lack of attendance counted against their grades.
The decision was made following reports that indicated that students tended to prolong their days off by not showing up for classes just before or after holidays.
The education ministry had pushed for years to tackle the phenomenon of student absenteeism.
