To reduce middle school dropout rates at government-run educational institutions in India and track attendance accurately, Sai Kiran Reddy and Deepak Kumar, under DISQ, developed an innovative digital technology-powered solution called VIDYAROHA (meaning, love for learning).
With the aim to make tracking attendance non-intrusive, accurate, and less time-consuming, the team integrated phone photography with facial recognition technology and piloted the solution across three government-run schools in Nashik city.
A Digital Solution
VIDYAROHA is based on a system that runs on an Android-based app for teachers, who can click pictures of the students present in class and upload them to the server. Once saved, the photos are processed using facial recognition technology and compared against base data. If there is a match, the student is marked present.
This solution is currently tracking over 50,000 school students, while also being used at around 45 Tata Strive centers and by professional training platform Edubridge in about 18 states.
The team has also compiled and automated the several manual and redundant forms that teachers have to fill out in addition to their non-academic duties. These have been collated into a single app-based form, saving nearly 600 man hours per year per school.