Shishir Roy, a farmer, and Namita, his wife who is a homemaker and dwells in Ambari, a village in the Baneswar area of Cooch Behar district, used to be perturbed about their children as to whether they reached school safely or have left the campus on time after the classes.

However, for the past few months, they are no longer bothered.

The moment Shruti, their daughter who is in third standard, and Sourav, their son in class I, enter the school, dad Shishir gets an alert on his cell phone.

Similarly, when the siblings leave the school, the father learns about it.

“We are most relieved,” said Shishir. “This system actually helps me and my wife to feel relaxed.”

The Ambari Junior Basic School, which is in Baneswar and around 18 kilometres from here, has introduced a digital attendance system for students and teachers.

There are 154 students in pre-primary to fifth standard at the school while there are five teachers.

“The guardians would often express concern about the safety of their children who walk to the school every day and return home. That is why, we introduced the digital attendance system,” said Pyarimohan Roy, the headmaster.

“Once a student reaches the school, he or she gets the identity card scanned on a machine. Immediately, a message goes to the parent’s cell phone, confirming that the child is in the school,” the headmaster added.

In the same manner, when the child walks out of the school, the card is scanned again and a second message goes to the parent’s cell phone, mentioning that the student has left the school.

“The guardians are aware of the usual time a boy or a girl takes to reach school from the home. In case the child delays in reaching the school or the home, they can immediately inform us and also start searching for the boy or the girl. Further, we could reduce the number of dropouts through this system,” said another teacher of the school.

The headmaster mentioned that he learned about the system from a team that had visited the school about a year ago.

“We held a meeting on whether we could introduce digital attendance with the village education committee and the parents. They all approved of it. Then, we got help from Nirmal Barman, a former student, who paid for the device that was installed at the school to introduce the system,” said Roy.

The school also sought a contribution of ₹30 from the parents of each student to make the identity cards.

Finally, the digital attendance system was introduced.

“The teachers too, mark their attendance through this system,” he added.

Such an initiative by a primary school located in an otherwise nondescript village in north Bengal has earned accolades from officials of the district education department.

“I have visited the school and saw how the system runs. It is an effective system for the safety of students and also encourages them to be regular in their attendance. We have a plan to promote the system in other primary schools of the district,” said Rajat Barma, chairperson of the District Primary School Council of Cooch Behar district.