image credit: NSTP/Zain Ahmed

Making sure kids go to school is important. Attendance has seemingly been taken the same way for years. One school in Malaysia is turning to facial recognition and AI to more efficiently record their students and teachers.

The SK Taman Perling school in Johor is using facial recognition to take attendance. The scanning process, which uses 30 facial points to make an identification, only takes two seconds. Once the pupil is scanned, personal information such as name, id number, and class, is stored in the school’s database.

“The pupils’ attendance data will be stored in the system before it is copied and transferred to the Education Ministry’s database through the Students Database application,” said headmaster Zamri Abd Wahad.

School Facial Recognition for Students and Teachers

The school has two face scanners in the hall for pupils and one installed in the office for teachers and staff members. The technology was developed by Malaysia based software company RN Technologies Sdn Bhd. The system which cost about $12,000 was fully funded by the Myra Hub Foundation.

The SK Taman Perling School has 1,034 students including preschoolers and a special education class along with 76 teachers and 12 staff members. They are the first school in Malaysia to use facial recognition technology. Many schools in the country use QR code technology. The AI takes things to the next step.

“The aim of the system is to make it easier for teachers to take attendance. They no longer have to do it manually, which reduces teachers’ workload,” said Zamri.

Along with helping to take attendance, Zamri also hopes that the use of the system could be expanded to include visitors to help strengthen school security.

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