By IANS,
Patna : Skipping classes could prove costly for teachers in Bihar. Concerned over the poor attendance in schools, the state government has decided to introduce technology to monitor the presence of teachers in government schools, official sources said here Thursday.
“We have decided to monitor attendance of teachers in elementary, middle and secondary schools,” Anjani Kumar Singh, principal secretary of Human Resource Development (HRD), said.
“We are seriously working on developing a corruption free mechanism for monitoring school teachers,” Singh told IANS.
Singh said that monitoring of attendance in secondary schools was already underway with the help of a Patna-based government body.
Concerned over the low attendance in government schools across the state, the Nitish Kumar government last month warned that salaries of teachers in government schools would not be paid if they failed to ensure at least 75 percent attendance of their students.
Two months ago the government had offered Rs.1 per day to poor children to encourage them to attend school and raise literacy levels, officials said.
Bihar’s literacy rate is just 47 percent against the national average of 64.84 percent, as per the 2001 census.
Officials admitted that attendance in schools was less than 60 percent.