Bihar is using an app to track teachers’ attendance – much to their anger

In August, the Bihar government announced that government-school teachers would have to start marking their attendance on an app – it warned that if they did not start doing so, money would be deducted from their salaries in a few months.

The government introduced the app, e-Shikshakosh, for a three-month trial in June, and continued its use afterwards, though it also maintained manual attendance records. To mark their attendance with the app, teachers had to upload a photo of themselves from their school campuses between 8.30 and 9 every morning. The app recorded their locations, and accepted their attendance if they were within 500 metres of the campus.

If the threat to cut teachers’ salaries was not enough of a sign of the government’s seriousness about the new attendance system, in late October, a teacher from Bihar was suspended after she was found to have repeatedly marked her attendance on the app while sitting in her car.

Despite the government’s enthusiasm for the app, teachers in Bihar that Scroll spoke to said they were deeply unhappy with it – they observed that the system was inefficient and error-prone, even as it placed an undue burden on teachers.

Scroll emailed the state’s department of education, seeking responses to the teacher’s complaints about the new system. This story will be updated if it responds.

Unfamiliar technology

Many teachers in the state have been forced to invest in new phones because until recently, they used “button” phones, as feature phones are often known. “There are some older teachers who don’t even have a phone and are now having to figure out an Android phone that they have no knowledge about,” said a headmaster from a school in the state. All the teachers quoted in this story requested anonymity.

He added, “If the government wants to introduce digital attendance, then it should have made sure to provide all teachers with a new phone and given training on how to use it.”

For some, particularly older teachers, the headmaster explained, the challenge is so great that they bring members of their families along to the school to help them mark their attendance on the app or rely entirely on other teachers to carry out the task.

Riddled with problems

Perhaps even more vexing, teachers said, are the numerous glitches that they face in using the app.

Even if they open the app early, they explained, it takes an inordinately long time, first to open and then to register their attendance. “Sometimes we have to turn off the app and the phone and restart everything for it to work,” the headmaster said.

“We open the app and just stare at it as the loading sign keeps on turning and turning,” said another headmaster, who is also a leader of a teachers association. “Instead of giving our attendance and starting other work, we end up stressing over the app and fearing punishment.”

The app is also inefficient at detecting a user’s location, he noted. This is despite the fact that it allows teachers to mark their attendance from within 500 metres of their schools. “The location is almost always wrong and we have to turn on Google Maps and wait for it to find our location and then the correct address will reflect in the app,” this headmaster said.

Sometimes, even when they are inside the school, the app shows that they are thousands of metres away, teachers observed. “More than 90% of the time the app simply doesn’t work,” the second headmaster said. “When I’m right here in the office, it will say I am 12,000 metres away and this happens to almost every teacher in my school.”

He added, “I have students as my witness but the app won’t accept that I’m in school.”

The headmaster argued that mandating digital attendance in a state like Bihar that struggles with poor mobile network coverage is unfair to teachers. “In the morning, you will see teachers running here and there trying to find network, some even climb up on the roof just to find some network,” he said. The headmaster said that his school was situated close to the Indian Institute of Technology Patna, and the town of Bihta, where a new airport is coming up. “If it’s so bad in this area, imagine areas that are far away from the city,” he said.

He wondered if the government had taken into account the burden that the system would place on the network. “If over six lakh teachers are trying to log in between 8.30 and 9, won’t servers be down everywhere?” he said. “The government should provide phones and Wi-Fi at the school if they want us to use the app.”

Another teacher, with more than 31 years’ experience, said that irrespective of how early teachers in his school came to work, the app only began to work properly around 10 am or 11 am. He suggested that other technologies might be more efficient at tracking teachers’ attendance. “They can instead have the biometric system,” he said. “That can track our timings and we don’t need to be reliant on network for that.”

Teachers said that on WhatsApp groups, they encounter complaints about the system from colleagues across the state. “Every morning teachers will complain that they are unable to log into the app and start panicking about their attendance,” the first headmaster said. “I also have to keep walking all over our playground trying to find network. Our morning goes in stressing about the app instead of the students and our work.”

In fact, during Scroll’s conversation with the headmaster over the phone, the call was disconnected at least five times. “You see what I’m telling you,” he said. “This is what the network is like.”

The headmaster said that the education department had recently informed schools that for the month of October, the government would rely on manual attendance records rather than the digital ones. “I think it’s because none of the attendance is showing properly,” he said.

Unreasonably harsh rules

Despite the fact that many teachers struggle to navigate the system, the app is stringent with them. Each morning, teachers have to mark their attendance between 8.30 am and 9 am – even if they do so at 9.01 am, they are marked as “late” and are penalised for it. “If my bike gets a puncture or if there is an accident, even then we are not excused,” the first headmaster said.

The government has informed teachers that if they log into the app late, the first time they will lose half a day of casual leave. The second time, they will lose a whole day of casual leave and if they log in late a third time within a month, they will lose an entire day’s salary.

“Some of us work in schools located in remote areas,” the first headmaster said. “There is often no proper housing available there, so we have to live far away. It takes us very long to reach the school and then we have to struggle with this app.”

The teachers have been provided with a phone number they can contact when they face problems with the app, but they said that they do not get help when they call the number. “They just tell us that the issue will get resolved soon and that we should just wait,” the teacher with 31 years’ experience said. “They also don’t know what to tell us.”

Teachers are also worried because some rules about attendance remain unclear. One, for instance, said he had been assigned election work as a booth-level officer and was worried about whether and how he was also expected to mark his attendance on the app. “I have been posted 5 km away from my school. Do I have to go to the school give my attendance and then go for election duty?” he said. “And if I go directly for election work then my salary may get cut.”

Is absenteeism a problem?

Anil Kumar Roy, an activist based in Bihar, argued that fears about the problem of teacher absenteeism in Bihar are exaggerated. He cited two studies, one by the Azim Premji Foundation, conducted in 2017, and the other the Annual Survey of Education Report of 2022, to support this assertion.

The Azim Premji Foundation study covered 619 schools and 2,861 teachers across six states, including Bihar. It found that while about 20% of teachers were absent on average, only 2.5% were absent “without reason”. For the purpose of the study, a teacher was considered absent if they were not “present physically in the school for the duration of the visit”.

In the Annual Survey of Education Report of 2022, surveyors visited schools in about 19,000 villages from 616 districts across the country. In Bihar, they found that 80% of teachers were present in primary schools and 84% in upper primary schools.

Roy argued that the government’s main intent in introducing the app was to exert “complete control” over the teachers.

But in fact, he pointed out, some teachers had found ways to circumvent the app, even as others struggled with its inefficiencies. Specifically, he said, “Teachers who live close by can easily skip classes by just logging into the app, and others can come within the given radius, give their attendance and go back home. So this app is not solving any problems.”

The Uttar Pradesh government introduced a similar app in July. But teachers mobilised, protested and managed to get the new system suspended for now. Roy said, however, that this may not happen in Bihar since the teachers and teachers’ unions and associations do not have similar levels of influence in the state. “There is a lot of suppression here,” he said. But one of the teachers had a different assessment of the situation. “Right now there is a lot of anger and that anger will only grow,” he said. “We can expect a protest soon if these issues with the app continue.”