Remember the good old days shouting ‘present’ or ‘here’ when your teacher called your name on the register? These days could now be behind us thanks to a new trend occurring within the security industry.A fingerprint reader which not only acts as an access control system but doubles up as time and attendance keeping for school children.

This is exactly the case for a school in Washington County School in Florida. They were experiencing major problems with pupil’s attendance and considered a number of options before making a decision that a biometric entry system was the best way forward. Incoming students will scan their finger every morning, with another option of having them on selected school buses, so that each pupil is accounted for until they leave their home in the morning until they are dropped off in the evening.

Is this a step too far? Not according to parents who are looking for their children to get the best education. In the United States, schools with high attendance levels can be rewarded with funding for arts programmes, more books and even specialist teaching resources.

Some people have expressed concerns that with teenagers and children involved a biometric security system could be viewed as an invasion of privacy. Although with these systems fingerprint images are not kept in the fingerprint software database. The system uses a correlation of points of references and these cannot be retraced to formulate a fingerprint. But for some the questions remains, is it ethical to track young people?

Consider a situation where for example a pupil bunked off school for a day and something happened. Whose fault would it be; the parent or the teachers/school. It most cases the school would be seen as having the responsibility. The parent has done its initial duty of getting the child or teenager ready in the morning and leaving them to the bus stop or dropping them off at the school gates. But it is the schools duty to be accountable for the child once the transition has been made.

A biometric door locking systems may not be a cheap option and the school in Florida spent around £14,000 on their solution. This equates to around £20 per pupil per year, which is not that much given the peace of mind and security that it brings, not to mention the additional benefits of the Government incentives.

Companies such as ievo have developed highly robust biometric readers and some schools in here the UK are already using these systems, initially for access control – opening doors etc, but in the future these systems may have a lot more to offer.