Attendance – The Most Misused 'Weapon' in Colleges!

Dronacharya was undoubtedly a great teacher. He taught the princes who used to attend his classes very well. Ekalavya being a bad student, didn't even attend a single class. Still he managed to learn of his own and proved himself to be better archer than all of Drona's pupils including his favourite Arjuna. Practically, a student with zero attendance was far better than the students who regularly attended the classes. Ekalavya's archery prowess questioned the sanity of the wholeGuru-Shishya' tradition, then prevalent education system. Ultimately, Dronacharya demanded Ekalavya's right hand's thumb asguru-dakshina'!

Most of the modern Indian education boards and universities follow a similar rule where a student has to maintain a certain percentage of attendance to be eligible to write the final examination. The departments of pre university education (PUE board), in most of the Indian states including Karnataka have one such rule, where a student has to compulsorily maintain a minimum of 75% attendance of the total classes conducted in individual subjects. No one has the power to condone this shortage of attendance. Those who fail to meet minimum attendance requirements can't even write the supplementary examination conducted subsequently for the failed students, which even a student who gets zero has right to appear. These students should get readmitted to the concerned class in the subsequent year and again maintain 75% of attendance to be able to appear for the exams.

Thanks to attendance shortage, thousands of PUC students--both first year and second year--across Karnataka were not allowed to appear for the final exams this year. (Over 2,000 II PU students can't write exams) These students have to wait for another year to just be eligible write their exams.

Nowadays people judge the colleges by the fact whether they can deliver cent percent result or not. The colleges know this, so they make sure that the students, who most probably won't pass in the board exams don't even get to appear for these exams, thus maintain 100% result year after year. They use various tools to attain this. The most powerful of all is the misuse of the attendance rule. The dull students who are believed to fail in the board exam are prevented from even appearing for it by artificially creating the attendance shortage.

To maintain attendance, the students even though not interested attend the classes. Some of them read novels, text, play games on their phone, doodle, sleep, stare dreamily at the wall or even at a certain other student of opposite gender, among other activities which allows the time to pass without actually bothering the lecturer. These students, who are only physically present inside the classroom, are marked present in the attendance register. The student, who really want to attend and actually want to listen to the lecturer but misses it due to some personal or medical reason is marked absent, even if he makes up for it by taking the notes from the few fellow studious students.

Then there are those students who have very talented friends who give them proxy during their roll call, they are also marked present. Ironically, in some classes, the students who miss to say “Yes Sir” or “Yes Maam” during the roll call are also marked absent. The students who reach the class after the roll call are usually marked absent but it's not uncommon for the students to walk out of the back door once the lecturer has finished with the roll call.

The greatest problem an unskilled lecturer can face is to control a class full of students. The art of controlling about a hundred odd late teenage students is gained only by experience and lots of patience.  These lecturers don't actually mind students not being attentive towards the class, as long as they don't make any noise. As corporal punishment is no longer allowed, the attendance is the new cane used by the lecturers to discipline the students.

Then there are those students who are not even allowed to attend the class due various reasons, like non-payment of the fees, non-submission of some assignment or even as trivial as not following certain dress code. These students lose theirprecious' attendance rather unfairly. A few smart lecturers/colleges even make money of this rule by collecting “fine” from the students to cross this border of 75%.

The PUE board need not abolish the attendance rule whole together, they just have to make it a bit lenient. The board must make sure that the colleges don't misuse this powerful rule. The whole attendance system should be made transparent. No student should be marked absent for wrong reasons. Misusing this rule should be considered as an offence. A lecturer or a college found using this rule as a weapon must be punished.

The system of education is continuously evolving and improving with time. We have come a long way from the much flawed Guru-Shishya system to the modern education system. Still it isn't perfect. Hope it will gain perfectness in a few years. 

The author is a software Engineer based in Bengaluru