Nanjing University on Wednesday denied online claims that its smart classroom system monitors students' "head-up rate" or collects facial biometric information, after screenshots of the system sparked debate over privacy and algorithmic surveillance.

In a statement on its official WeChat account, the university's undergraduate school and information construction management center clarified several rumors, including claims that attendance rates would be linked to regular grades and that the midterm teaching inspection was ordered by higher authorities.

The controversy began after students received notices that the university would use its summer-upgraded smart classroom system to record attendance in certain courses for a week.

A screenshot then circulated online showing surveillance footage alongside statistics such as late students, attendance rate and head-up rate. Some teachers reportedly told class groups that attendance data would directly affect regular grades and could even cancel exam results, further fueling the dispute.

Media reports noted the project involved over 31.52 million yuan ($4.7 million) and the upgrading of 113 public classrooms, with bidding documents listing facial detection, facial recognition and AI head-up rate calculation.

Students said they were not consulted in advance and worried facial information could be accessed by the university and tech companies. Even without precise facial recognition, monitoring head-up rates alone made them uncomfortable, they said.

In Wednesday's statement, the university said the renovation aimed to upgrade classroom audio and video environments, enable course livestreaming and cross-campus interaction, and support course replay and teaching data reuse, and that the project followed government procurement rules.

It said midterm teaching inspection is routine management work and this semester it plans to pilot attendance statistics through the smart classroom system to support teaching reform and course development with objective data. Claims that the inspection was ordered by higher authorities and that attendance would be tied to regular grades "are not true", it said.

On privacy, the university said: "Without authorization, our smart classroom system does not collect biometric information such as facial data or conduct facial recognition in teaching applications," adding that considering the increasingly diverse ways of classroom learning, the smart classroom system currently no longer collects head-up rate data.

The university said the classroom footage circulating online was a personal screenshot from an online supervision session at the Suzhou campus in May and was not real-time monitoring from the current system. It pledged to respect and protect student privacy while empowering learning with digital intelligence.