School installs £9,000 facial recognition cameras to stop students turning up late

[TriWooOx]

Quote:A school has introduced futuristic face recognition cameras to combat students arriving late for classes.

The £9,000 Face Register system monitors more than 200 sixth-form students at the Sir Christopher Hatton School in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.

Two cameras produce a 3D scan of pupils and identifies faces using minute measurements of eyes, noses and face shape.

The software can even recognise students as they grow and their features change.

It monitors and records students' attendance and enables the school to force anyone arriving late to make up the time at the end of the day.

The school was the first in Northamptonshire, and one of 12 across the country, to install the technology.

Another 18 schools nationwide have expressed strong interest in the system, developed by Northampton company Aurora Computer Services.

Kelli Foster, the school's sixth form head, said: 'The technology is just incredible.

'Before, each pupil had to sign in and out of reception by filling in a form but now it takes under ten seconds to gather so much more information.

'When they use the machines, they have to enter their PIN and when their faces have been matched up they select whether they are signing in or out and the reason why.

'This information is then sent to our registration system which stores it as a record so we can track each time they come in and out of school and the common room.

'For example, if a student is late, the records will tell us exactly how many minutes late they were and we make them make the time up at the end of the day.

'We are using it on our sixth-form pupils at the moment but are so impressed it could be rolled out across the whole school, including teachers and staff.'

The system, installed last month, can be used by teachers to post messages to individual students, who must confirm they have been read.

The camera is so advanced that it can distinguish between identical twins and select the correct face from a number of students standing in front of the camera.

When signing in or out of school, pupils have to approach the black box and enter a PIN code, which links to their photograph on a database.

They are then snapped by the cameras and the images are compared with the picture on file to determine a match, meaning students are unable to sign in for their friends.

Headteacher Victoria Bishop said the school had been prompted to install the system for safety reasons.

She said: 'This is being used by our sixth form, they are allowed to go off site during lunch breaks and this will enable them to register very easily and know where they are if there is a fire.

'We do take safety very seriously and we are very keen to move with the times because we are a maths and computing school and we are really keen to use technology.'

Student Kavita Parmer, 16, said the new scheme made registering easier.

She said: 'I think it's a really good idea because when you go out of school it's easier than it used to be.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...-late.html

[Deathaniel]

query for the brits who are in the area, or who can look into it?

1. how large are these schools? are they isolated as in not surrounded by suburbia?

2. are the grounds fenced in, is there an abundance of field and parking (irrationally so ie not that they have a football field)?

3. does every student/ faculty have to be entered into the system so with in say 5 years 70% of locals will be in data base?

My first guess on reading this is this is either a testing ground for the tech which; fine. Or it's where your equivalent of fema in the NWO will be sending folks or directing desired survivors, and the facilities may or may not be set up to house large stores, or underground facilities. Since I've resigned myself to acknowledging I'll never be setting foot in Britain it has fallen off my radar over the past 5-7 years...