Ludhiana: During the recent mega parent-teacher meeting (PTM) held at government schools across the city, new directives were issued to overhaul student attendance marking. School officials were instructed to transition to a new government and education department portal, which includes a feature to notify parents via SMS when a child is absent. Teachers are also required to log their own attendance on this digital platform. However, the rollout has been met with significant logistical hurdles as principals and staff report various system glitches.Numerous school heads and teachers have raised concerns over the portal’s functionality. Common grievances include the inability to locate assigned classes on the interface and the discovery that names of certain students are missing from the digital database. These technical inconsistencies have created a sense of confusion regarding the status of traditional record-keeping. In the absence of clear instructions on whether to retire physical attendance registers, many schools are currently maintaining both systems, resulting in a doubled workload for the staff.Staff Grapple with System ErrorsThe practical challenges are widespread. “My duty is for six hours; I marked my attendance timely, but there was a glitch in the system as it was automatically logged out for me, despite repeated attempts,” shared a government senior secondary school principal. While expressing frustration, the principal noted that as a new initiative, there is hope that these teething problems will be resolved soon by the concerned authorities.Similar issues were echoed by a primary school teacher working the evening shift. The teacher reported facing two distinct problems: missing student names on the roster and receiving automated warning notifications from higher authorities even after successfully marking their own attendance before the deadline. These discrepancies suggest a lag between the user interface and the central monitoring system.Manual Workarounds Amid AdmissionsFurthermore, the ongoing admission process in several schools has added another layer of complexity. Since the exact details of newly admitted students are still being processed for portal registration, teachers are forced to rely on manual marking for these pupils. This hybrid approach further complicates the transition to an entirely paperless system.Despite the formal implementation orders issued by the District Education Office, clear guidance on troubleshooting these specific errors remains pending. When approached for a statement regarding the logistical challenges and the resulting dual-record system currently burdening the teaching staff, the District Education Officer (DEO), Dimple Madaan, was not available for any comment on the matter.
