WRITTEN ON January 12th, 2007 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Identity, What do we want?
It looks like there’s progress for “Leave them kids alone“, according to today’s Sun
PARENTS won a major battle yesterday to stop children being fingerprinted at school. Almost a million kids — some as young as five — have had their dabs taken and stored without their families’ consent.They are used to identify pupils in computerised class registers or library systems.But furious parents and MPs claim it is a major invasion of privacy and a step towards a Big Brother state.
Last night the Government bowed to pressure and ordered curbs on schools after a six-month campaign.
In a major U-turn, Schools Minister Jim Knight agreed to draw up strict guidelines with watchdogs. He admitted: “I can fully understand these concerns.”
We did say (here and here) that the antis were looking pretty organised. Nice one Phil. One down, several more to go.
3 Responses to “First fruits of campaign success: kids’ fingerprinting”
Unfortunately this story isn’t what it seems. The first I knew about it was when the BBC rang me for a comment, so I contacted DfES to find out if I’d blinked and missed something, only to find that they were still “trying to get to the bottom of it”.
It turns out that there was no statement of any kind from Jim Knight yesterday, which is no suprise on a Thursday evening when MPs are generally scrambling for their constituencies.
Best guess is that the Sun had either (a)picked up on a petition response on the No 10 site in December which says that the government is reviewing guidelines on biometric data with BECTA and the ICO or (b)was referring to an exchange of letters between Greg Mulholland and Jim Knight around the same time. Why the Sun picked today for the story isn’t clear.
Although any sign that the government is taking school use of biometrics seriously is a step forward, the news is really not that brilliant. As I said to the Register, this is an issue that provokes strong feelings and so it needs consultation and open debate rather than the imposition of ‘guidelines’ from on high.
There’s also the problem about consent to having fingerprints taken. Government has already said that this can come from children if they are ‘mature enough’, but that isn’t an accurate reflection of the law – ie Gillick competence.
We really do have to stop this insidious watering-down of the rules set out by the Law Lords in Gillick. Apart from being a good protection for children that preserves their Article 5 UNCRC right to seek guidance from their parents, there is a growing risk that someone – a teacher or other practitioner – is going to get hurt if an irate parent decides to go to court.
BTW Phil is being unduly modest – he’s pitched in with a lot of invaluable help over the last few months, and I’m sure his input is an important factor in our beginning to turn the tide (at last). So, onwards and upwards…
This is going on within the Devon LEA down in the South West – we did some work with school children a while ago and the issue came up. The scary thing was that none of the kids (13-16 year olds) seemed to mind. They felt it was better than using a card because you always lots them and some came out with the classic “well if you’re not doing anything wrong…”! When asked about what they did with their fingerprint details after they had left the school they neither knew nor cared…. what has happened to the rebelious youth?
I know one parent at a school in the area who objected and asked for their child’s details to be removed – and then the next time the child went for a library they told her she couldn’t take out a book without the fingerprint record and re-registered her.
Certainly the teachers we spoke to couldn’t see anything wrong with it either…
It is not false modesty to say that I really didn’t have a great deal to do with this one. Credit must go to David Clouter of LeaveThemKidAlone, Terri Dowty of ARCH, Pippa King, a whole host of parents and other groups who back the campaign.
As a parent who had never campaigned before LTKA, David picked up the ball and ran with it like the clappers – showing that a sustained bombardment of bad publicity in the national, but probably more importantly the regional and local press *can* get the government’s attention.
Being *right* helps, too
Now let’s see just exactly what DfES’s ‘guidelines’ turn out to be…