St Stephen's College principal on why attendance doesn't matter

The spotlight in education should be on attention, not on attendance. On work, not on unrealistic framework. A fixed percentage of attendance as eligibility requirement has long outlasted its relevance. It needs to be given a quiet burial. The sooner, the better. The arguments against persisting with the current attendance-requirement regime are manifold.

Impractical

First, it is riddled with impracticalities and unfairness. Take the infamous Unmukt Chand controversy. It has to be an absurd system that admits a high profile sportsperson like him and expects him to meet the attendance requirement, overlooking the simple fact that a human body cannot be in two different places at the same time.

He is not the only instance. Sports is becoming increasingly professional and competitive. Most of the candidates admitted against the sports quota cannot meet the attendance requirements even half way. The same problem afflicts, though to a lesser extent, those who are proficient in other extra-curricular activities, debating for example. I did hope, very earnestly, that in the wake of the national controversy generated by the Unmukt Chand issue, a second look at this obsolete system would be made. It did not happen.

Rules that were feasible, say, half a century ago no longer are. They need to be revised and rejected. It is grotesque to retain rules the only scope of which is that they can be selectively violated.

Imposing mandatory attendance requirements on students, which they are sure to be unable to meet, can have only one outcome: forcing them to resort to desperate and dishonest remedies. The abuse of the "medical certificate" is a veritable scandal.

Often, when a medical certificate is submitted to me, especially towards the fag end of the semester, I see it as certificate on the sickness of a system than of an individual.

A whole fake medical certificate racket flourishes in broad daylight. Between exempting students from attendance requirements and forcing them to submit fake medical certificates, secured with bribes of varying magnitude, the former is undoubtedly to be preferred. The pervasiveness of the malady threatens to make higher education - in which connection "character formation" is still mentioned and character certificates still issued! - is an absolute shame. A system that compels young people to resort to dishonesty is a shame on the nation.

What aggravates this issue even more is widespread teacher truancy in colleges. At a meeting of college principals with the vice chancellor of Delhi University some three years ago, shocking statistics on this issue were revealed.

I shall, for good reason, refrain from quoting the figures. It is morally reprehensible that students be coerced to attend, whereas a large section of teachers play truant with them. This can only exasperate young people. Meeting the exigencies of the letter of the law, while violating its spirit, is not education. It makes a mockery of education. The organic link between regularity of attendance on the part of students and integrity of work on the part of teachers must be emphasised and respected.

Learning

The second issue is that of quality of education, of which the learning "environment" is a crucial part. Teenagers in particular are susceptible to the suggestions afloat in the learning milieu, which shape their attitudes and outlook. That being the case, how can attitude to attendance be viewed separately from the prevailing attitude to learning itself? A disinterested delight in the learning process is an exception, not the general rule in the extant system. Most students study for examinations, and are happy to get away with the minimum effort required. The aim is not to learn as such, but to qualify for the next step. In this, they cannot be blamed. This is what we have offered to them.

Abolishing the attendance requirement has the immense educational benefit of separating the chaff from the grain. Once students are free to attend or not to attend, the teachers concerned will come under the obligation to take their work more seriously. They will have to motivate the students to attend through the quality of the work they do, rather than presume on the luxury of a system that affords them a captive, even if grudging, audience coerced by some archaic rules. For a teacher, who takes himself and his work seriously, it is an insult that students attend his/her classes only because of attendance requirements! Abolishing this requirement is arguably the foremost investment we can make into enhancing quality of education.

Assessment

As of today, in a large number of instances, attendance requirements adjudicate student-teacher relationships in an unhealthy and unethical manner. Rather than command respect through scholarship, commitment to teaching and personal stature, some teachers work out their relationship with students using the leverage of attendance.

Admittedly there are other means available as well. The linkage between attendance and internal assessment is an absolute disaster.

Higher education in our country is in disarray. It is in a state of terminal illness. It has a variety of causes and facets. Archaic regulations, of which attendance requirement is only one, are partly to blame. A beginning needs to be made. Better begin with the simplest. Reforming regulations pertaining to attendance is, surely, one such.