Teachers’ Bio-metric Verification-Mapping the Education Department’s workforce

Click here for Biometric Verification Portal of District Swat

Background:

One of the main problems hampering education initiatives in Swat has been the performance of teachers. Teacher performance is a direct determinant of student learning and overall quality of Education. Additionally, since there are close to 3400 teachers currently employed with the Education & Literacy Department in Swat, a significant portion of the annual education budget is spent on their salaries and related administrative expenses.

A major hurdle in initiating reforms to address this issue has been the lack of data on teachers. Since there was no database that consolidated all information on teachers, it has created hindrances in rationalizing decisions aimed at improving the situation.

Objectives:

To map all government school teachers and compile their information on a central database via biometric verification

Scope:

All government school teachers across all tehsils of Swat

Overview:

The process of Teachers’ Biometric Verification is carried out at Department appointed centers across all seven tehsils of swat. As part of the process, all employees must go and personally provide their thumb impressions, photograph, and data, which are logged electronically. Any employee who fails to go to their respective office for their biometrics data submission till the announced deadline is automatically removed from the payroll.

A teacher’s information is uploaded against their respective school which is tracked by the unique SMIS code of each school. This process shall help in cross checking data with teacher allotment figures and providing visibility for rationalizing teacher’s allotment.

The data collected by this exercise will be used for:

• Collation and comparison with the pre-existing employee payroll record (under Auditor General) in order to ensure that employees who were receiving double salaries owing to outdated data are identified
• Monitoring of teacher attendance on the field via appointed monitors so that the real picture of a teacher’s attendance is captured. This process also automatically verifies the data collected in the first stage of this activity. The Education & Literacy department has created a mobile based Android application which allows for biometrics data to be synced immediately with the Department’s dashboard upon the collection of the thumb impressions using a portable biometrics device. This field based monitoring will ensure that any remaining loopholes are identified and no cases of ghost teachers exist in Swat.
• Implementation of real-time biometrics attendance systems in schools to track teacher absenteeism

Impact:

The overarching goal of this exercise is to make data-driven decisions in order to regulate:

• Teacher recruitment
• Teacher allocation
• Salary allotment
• Teacher attendance

As per December 2018, a total of over 95% staff has completed their biometric verification.