Some students whose immigration status depends on their class attendance rate wrestle with a biometric clock-in system

When strong detergents drip onto her fingers at work, Luciana Machado Teijeira worries, she says, that it might impact her school attendance record.

She works as a cleaner. She often heads to her English language class in the city centre after an early shift.

The school has a biometric system for recording attendance. That means students have to scan their fingerprints and then their faces to clock in and out of class.

But sometimes she gets an error message when she tries to scan her finger, a result, says Teijeira, of the cleaning fluids. “When I put my finger, because of the products, I have difficulty.”

She wouldn’t have cared much, says Teijeira, but for the impact it could have on her immigration status. 

Proving attendance is crucial for students from outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), who have to be present at least 85 percent of the time to renew immigration stamps. 

Language schools greenlit by the Department of Justice to enrol non-EEA students have to keep logs. It’s a system set up to make sure when someone gets permission to stay in Ireland as a student, they actually are studying and turn up to classes – and not just working all the time.

Teijeira says that using a biometric system to capture attendance without there always being an alternative option adds to the stress that comes from needing to prove a high attendance record – or risk having to give up their life in Ireland and leave. 

Checking in and out

A recent chain of emails over two months between Teijeira and the NED College helpdesk shows her reaching out about the biometric system and telling them she was having trouble with it.

David Russell, director of NED College, said the biometric system and the app that displays its data are handy for all kinds of things and replace paper-signed attendance sheets. “Which can be easily lost, damaged, faked/forged and/or misregistered.”

They regularly check their system and haven’t found any errors around the accuracy of recorded attendance, said Russell, in an email. “Particularly in relation to students being in the class, recorded by the machine and attendance not being granted by the system.”

When students struggle to register attendance, they can let reception staff know straight away – and the staff can analyse and fix the problem, he said.

Russell says that typically problems crop up when students are assigned the wrong classroom on the biometrics system, or when their fingerprint wasn’t properly scanned.

If the system or machines are updating, that can sometimes affect it too, he said. “In such cases, paper-signed attendance lists would be issued for the day(s) in question.”

By phone on Tuesday, Russell said he doesn’t think having a permanent paper option in place is a good idea. Been there, done that, he said.

“Unfortunately, human error, gets lost misplaced, students sign for other students.”

Before rolling out the electronic system, the school reached out to immigration officials and let them know, too, said Russell. “They gave us two big thumbs up,” he said. 

Uploading sick notes

Teijeira, the student at NED College, says that the system for logging sick days has shortcomings. 

She recently missed a few days of school because she was sick, she said. 

In such cases, students can submit medical certs to the school using the app to account for absences. If these are accepted, the absences don’t bring down their attendance rate towards that crucial 85 percent

But the system asks for both a medical cert and a receipt or invoice.

“I submitted my medical cert for both,” said Teijeira. She didn’t have a receipt. She’s a patient at the hospital and didn’t have to pay for that visit.

She waited and waited, but the red dot in front of those days didn’t turn green on the app.

Two days later, Teijeira emailed the school to ask why. 

They went back and forth about the invoice, until the staff member she was emailing with told her to refresh the app – and the dots had gone green. 

Teijeira says it should be possible to just drop the cert to reception and explain. It would get rid of the stress, she said. “They prefer systems than people.”

Russell, the director of NED College, said sometimes students hand in medical certs super late or from medical practices that have gone out of business or are forged. 

The college needs to check them carefully, he said. 

It’s harder to forge both a cert and an invoice, said Russell by phone on Tuesday. But students are welcome to drop their documents off at the reception, too, he said. 

The runaround

Russell, the school director, says being late to class or forgetting to scan fingerprints in and out means not getting full attendance. “This is standard practice,” he said.

“Students are awarded attendance based on their clock-in and out time plus their duration of stay in the class (per day),” he said.

The Department of Justice’s rulebook says those who are 15 minutes late to class or leave before it’s over should be counted as absent for that day. 

Schools can lose their eligibility to enrol those students if they breach those rules. 

Russell says some students who are late don’t record their arrival on the system because they know that doesn’t count but then clock out as normal.

He hears about cases like this almost every two weeks, he says. 

“I mean, every time when we investigate these things, that is what has happened almost every single time,” said Russell.

He didn’t say what exactly happens when someone says they were not as late as 15 minutes but said he is open to giving students the benefit of the doubt and having a meeting with them. 

But Teijeira says there have been times when she has been present on time and tried to register and found, when she checked in the days after, that it wasn’t marked as present on the app.

In emails between the end of September and the end of November, Teijeira flagged three days as wrongly logged as absent or not recorded. 

Two of those issues were sorted when she emailed in – one switched to present afterwards, and the other had been affected by an update and also amended, the helpdesk said. 

One of the days when Teijeira says she was in classes on time is still marked as absent, though.  On 22 November, she emailed the helpdesk to say that her attendance on 20 November hadn’t been registered. Her clocking out had, but not her clocking in.

In that case, they replied that they had checked the logs, and there had been no errors, and if she had been able to log out okay, she should have been able to log in okay. They asked her to remember to log in and to contact reception if she couldn’t. 

But she had proof she was present that day, she said. Teijeira kept pushing, and her email was forwarded to Russell. 

He replied to that on 4 December. “If a student arrives or leaves late [sic], then attendance cannot be awarded,” says his email. 

And if they forget to clock in and out of the biometric machine, they can’t get full credit, he wrote.

“We have asked our IT department to look into this matter, but it would appear that the system is working properly,” says the email.

Teijeira emailed back, saying the teacher had seen her in class and she wasn’t a bad student. “The school prefers to lose students and trust in machines,” she wrote. 

A staffer replied to that email to say that they had checked everything and the system was right. If there were errors, they would give her full attendance, but there hadn’t been.

Teijeira gave up then, she says. 

Falling back on humans

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said English language schools can have all kinds of systems to monitor attendance. 

“Manual, electronic or a mix and students must be made aware of the operation of the system and their obligations,” they said.

Schools submit attendance logs to its Immigration Service Delivery, the spokesperson said. These are “checked when students apply to renew their immigration permission”.

Brian Hearne, policy and communication manager at the Irish Council for International Students (ICOS), says they know some schools use biometric technology to record attendance. 

That can be efficient, he says. But “it does not mean that they are completely free from system or data handling errors”.

When those errors show, there can be little recourse for students, he said.

Schools should be transparent about these technologies, said Hearne. “And ensure that they mitigate against possible technical or human errors that may occur.”

Students have in the past flagged technical issues at NED College. In January 2021, the school told immigration officials that it had kicked out Eduardo Fabian Vallejo and sent him an expulsion notice, too, without warning. 

Vallejo was grappling with mental illness at the time and had a doctor’s note. Later, a staff member said it had expelled him by a mistake triggered by a technical glitch. 

Russell, the director of NED, said that the college’s biometric system has proven to be consistently accurate since it was rolled out. “Particularly in relation to students being in the class, recorded by the machine and attendance not being granted by the system.”

They look carefully into each complaint from a student about the system failing to record attendance, he said. “It has yet to happen that the attendance of an entire class failed to register, which surely would be the case if the system was at fault?”

They’ve noticed some students struggle as it can take time for the attendance data to transfer from their biometric system to the app, Russell said. They’re changing that early next year though, so it will be updated immediately, he said.

Teijeira says lots of her classmates grapple with the technology and the fact that they can’t sign in on paper and know that it is there and logged. People get anxious about renewing their immigration papers, she says.

“I’m worried about people like me, who have problems like me,” she said in Portuguese through Google Translate.