Selfie is the new sign-in for teachers in UP

LUCKNOW: The selfie obsession may have triggered a debate on whether the social media fad is a bane or a boon, but it’s turned out to be a clinical tool to enforce discipline in education in the Uttar Pradesh hinterland.
District education authorities in Barabanki, UP have hit upon an innovative idea to smash the network of ghost teachers and rampant absenteeism in class with a diktat to its 7,500 teachers — send your selfie before starting class or lose a day’s salary.Besides the selfie-attendance meter, other disciplinary measures have been enforced. Teachers found surfing social media sites during school hours will also lose pay. The new mechanism to ensure punctuality has triggered panic. Teachers, particularly women, are now hurriedly completing morning chores, catching public transport to rush to school. And their first job is to shoot a selfie before their classroom and post it on the Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA) webpage to mark their attendance. Their mission needs to be completed by 8am sharp with BSA putting in place an automated system to verify selfies.
So far, 700 teachers have lost pay in two months after the system was implemented and schools reopened after summer vacation in Barabanki.
Primary education had been crippled in the state due to chronic absenteeism by teachers in primary and upper primary schools and ghost teachers on pay rolls. Education department officials have caught several primary teachers not taking classes in remote areas and hiring a local man to teach on their behalf for cut money.
Also, some unscrupulous teachers don’t report to schools at all and manage their attendance and pocket their salaries in connivance with clerical staff.
Talking to TOI, basic shiksha adhikari V P Singh said, the entire process of receiving and verifying selfies is being strictly implemented on directions of the chief minister and basic education minister.
“Teachers have been specifically told if they don’t post their selfies by 8 am, they would lose their a day’s pay,” said Singh.
But teachers feel the diktat is “tortuous”. “Traffic jams, unavailability of public transport in rural areas and poor Internet connectivity are posing a hurdle in uploading selfies on time. I lost a day’s salary because my tempo got stuck in a jam at the railway crossing,” said a woman teacher of a primary school in Ram Nagar in Barabanki district.
One of her colleagues said, “District authorities are not ready to accept that Internet on mobiles fluctuate and this delays uploading of selfies. Net speed is so slow in rural areas and sometimes selfies can’t be posted at all. And we end up losing a day’s pay.”
Talking to TOI, Barabanki’s basic shiksha adhikari VP Singh, said there’s enough buffer time to teachers, but selfies have to be posted by 8am. Also, teacher teachers can surf Facebook, Twitter or Whatsapp during school hours, he said.