BUSINESS
School gives thumbs up to biometric scans
01-06-2005
by Deirdre McArdle
A Dublin school has announced it is implementing a pilot project which uses fingerprints to check if kids are attending school.
The school, St. Andrew's College in Blackrock Co. Dublin, has said the biometric solution, dubbed TruancyGuard, will use a combination of fingerprints and access codes to record pupils as they enter and leave the school premises.
The tool will help the school to abide by statutory requirements set out by National Educational Welfare Board, the national agency with responsibility for encouraging and supporting regular school attendance. The board was set up under the Education (Welfare) Act of 2000. TruancyGuard will initially be trialled on a single class from second year at the school, according to Arthur Godsil, headmaster of St Andrew's College.
As well as guarding against truancy, the school hopes that the package will help to cut back on the amount of time teachers spend registering pupils every morning, said Godsil. "This is a time consuming but necessary process... However, if we can place the responsibility of registration directly on the pupils, this will free the individual form teachers' time," he added.
TruancyGuard was developed by software developers Adrenalin. In a bid to allay fears of privacy invasion the solution does not store fingerprints; rather it looks at specific parts of the fingerprint in conjunction with a code.
"Some people hold reservations about allowing their biometric information to be stored," said John Beckett, managing director of Adrenalin.
"Accordingly, we have worked hard to ensure this problem is dealt with adequately in our software. Rather than storing fingerprint information on file, the fingerprint verification is conducted through specific points on the print, what is termed the 'minutiae points.' This method has the same secure results as full fingerprint storage but protects the individuals' privacy through the non recording of their unique finger prints," Beckett explained.
Schoolkids at St. Andrews College will be required to scan their fingerprints at a unit every morning on entering the school. The fingerprint is then examined for minutiae points, converted into a new mathematical template using the same algorithm every time. The system then compares the template against an encrypted line of code on file for the ID number entered by the person trying to log in.
The registration solution has also been combined with a feature called TextAlerter whereby parents or guardians are alerted by text message if kids do not appear in school as expected.
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