Basic education teachers on Monday staged a protest against the state government’s decision to implement the selfie-based online attendance system through Prerna app. The teachers claimed that it may intrude into their privacy and photos of female teachers could be misused.
On Tuesday, the teachers will protest on a larger scale and present a memorandum against the online attendance to the district magistrate.
“The main concern is that the selfie based system is not safe for women teachers and girl students of junior high school and primary school. Anyone can post the photos of lady teachers and school girls on social media and misuse the same,” said Nidhi Srivastav, city secretary, United Teachers’ Association (Agra).
“Every teacher would have to submit selfie three times a day – in the morning, during lunch time and while leaving – and this would be difficult to comply with,” she informed.
“Many women teachers are not active on social media and avoid sharing their photos as these can be misused. But now they would have to upload a ‘selfie’ along with the students on the app,” said Kirti Dubey, head teacher at Junior Girls’ High School in Jagdishpura locality.
“Despite scarcity of staff in schools, teachers are busy with official meetings and non academic works. And now attendance through ‘selfie’ three times a day would be another burden on teachers,” said Rajeev Verma, district secretary, UTA,
Basic shiksha adhikari (BSA), Agra, Omkar Singh was contacted over the issue, but was not available for comment.