Makassar to launch smart cards for school attendance
By GovInsider
Parents to get alerts on students’ activities.
Makassar City will this week introduce smart cards to track students’ activities in schools.
Students will have to scan their cards when they arrive and leave school, alerting parents via SMS on whether their child is attending school.
The card will also be used to borrow books and pay for meals in the cafeteria. Parents will get messages on what types of books they borrow and how much they spend on food. The cards are embedded with chips containing the student’s details, such as their identity number, gender, date of birth, and parents’ names.
"For the first phase, we will be launching 312,000 cards for several schools in Makassar,” said Mayor Ramdhan Pomanto.
This will gradually be expanded to cover all school students in Makassar, he added.
The city is following in Jakarta’s footsteps, which uses smart cards to track school subsidies. It is now expanding to give out university scholarships as well.