By Erick Nyayiera
The administration of Bondo Township Secondary School in Bondo Sub-county has installed biometric machines to curb the high rate of absenteeism among students from the institution.
According to the Principal, Mr. Benson Okoth, the school management initially came up with a plan that saw class teachers manually take roll calls in respective classes and later calling parents of student absent from school.
He says that they would then enquire on the whereabouts of such students and ensure they are looked for and brought back to the institution.
The Principal stated however that the method was not very effective, a reason that prompted the decision to invest in a biometric machine that will be linked with the parents’ phone numbers to directly inform them once their children have arrived at school.
Mr. Okoth, who spoke to Education News, observed that due to the hard economic times, a number of learners have resorted to a habit of leaving home in the name of reporting to school only to disappear along the way to venture into manual jobs.
He stated that they have discovered that since the school is located in town, some of the learners were being interrupted by the local economic activities such as Boda-boda business and construction works among others instead of going to school.
The Principal has however revealed that despite those challenges, the school still managed to maintain its good performance in the 2021 KCSE examinations emerging as the top best day school in Bondo Sub-county for the second year running.
