KARACHI: The days of ghost teachers and fake attendance are numbered as Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Tuesday approved the Facial Recognition Attendance Monitoring and Evaluation System (Frames) for rollout in six districts from Aug 17 to enforce attendance and bring transparency to public schools across the province.

The new facial recognition attendance system, a provincial government digital initiative aimed at bringing real-time, technology-driven oversight to schools across the province, will automatically record the arrival and departure times of teaching and non-teaching staff for monitoring.

The application will work both online and offline to ensure functionality in areas with limited connectivity, and all schools in the pilot districts have been geo-tagged to prevent proxy attendance; the system will automatically record arrival and departure times for instant monitoring by officials.

The first phase will cover one district from each division of the province, with the expansion to the remaining districts planned in phases.

Pilot project to be launched in six districts on 17th

According to a statement issued by the CM House, the decision was taken at a meeting chaired by the chief minister and attended, among others, by Education Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah, Chief Secretary Asif Hyder Shah and School Education Secretary Zahid Abbasi.

Briefing the chief minister, education department representatives said that all staff in the six selected districts had already been registered and that necessary preparations, including system testing, were complete.

The chief minister said that teachers’ presence in schools was critical to improving the quality of education. “Every child has the right to receive quality education, and that requires teachers and school staff to be present and perform their duties effectively,” he added.

He directed the education secretary to set up a robust support and monitoring mechanism during the initial rollout and ensure that school administrations received all necessary technical assistance.

He also ordered close monitoring and regular review of implementation in the six districts so that the system could be refined before its province-wide expansion.

“This is not merely an attendance application; it is an important governance reform that will strengthen monitoring, improve institutional discipline, and enhance the overall performance of the education sector,” he added.

The education minister said that the launch of Frames marked a significant milestone in the province’s education reforms. “The future of educational management lies in data-driven governance,” he said, adding that the department was increasingly adopting technology-driven solutions to improve efficiency and accountability.

Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2026