Afgevaardigden verbolgen door leerlings vingerafdrukken te nemen van

De richtlijnen heffen zorgen over veiligheid, toestemming en toegang op

Door Dinah het Grieks

Afgevaardigden hebben nieuwe begeleiding van Becta gekritiseerd die toont de scholen van leerlingen kunnen vingerafdrukken nemen zonder eerst het vragen om ouderlijke toestemming.

Hoewel de richtlijnen van Becta, zegt volledig indien het agentschap van de scholenICT van de Overheid, scholen „ouders in om het even welk besluit impliceren om biometrische of vingerafdruktechnologie“ te introduceren, het niet verplicht om is dit te doen.

Onder Het Akte van de Bescherming van gegevens er zijn niets die uitdrukkelijk scholen vereist om naar de toestemming van ouders te streven alvorens een biometrisch technologiesysteem uit te voeren, veroorzakend verontwaardiging onder sommige Afgevaardigden.

Shadow Minister for Schools Nick Gibb said: “This is long-awaited but very disappointing guidance. It is very weak as it neither requires schools to seek parental consent nor recognises the serious issues at stake with schools fingerprinting children simply for administrative convenience. The Government needs to look more carefully at the fundamental principles these issues raise.”

Biometric technologies have been used by some schools for four years to help with cashless lunch queues, school libraries and attendance systems. Benefits cited include speeding up administration processes and cutting down on bullying and the theft of lunch money from pupils.

Although the Department for Children, Schools and Family said it has no figures on how many schools use biometric systems, a survey conducted by the campaigning organisation Leave them Kids Alone shows it is growing rapidly.

LKA has estimated that 3,500 primary and secondary schools now use biometric data systems and that approximately 750,000 children have been fingerprinted by their schools with around 20 new schools a week being added to those figures.

It is mostly fingerprint technology that is used but MPs are concerned that the Government has given little thought to issues of security, consent, keeping the data for longer, or permanently as well as access by other authorities such as the police.

Greg Mulholland Lib Dem Shadow Minister for Schools went so far as to say in a House of Commons debate that “the collection of biometric data by schools is not necessary”. He said using biometric systems utterly outweighed any positive benefits that may ensue.

Becta told Computeractive that if parents or children objected and refused to give their fingerprints, then schools could not force them to comply. A representative told us that if this was the case, the guidelines clearly point out that schools have to offer alternative systems, such as smartcards, to access the same services if pupils want to opt out or their parents object.

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