'Alarm at fingerprinting of pupils' in Suffolk

A Freedom of Infromation request in Suffolk by a journalist, in this article, has uncovered that out of the county's 356 schools, 83 are using biometrics recognition systems.

That is just over 23% of Suffolk's school children, around 20,000 children.

One child's biometric fingerprints were taken without his parents consent:

Jonathan Adams' 11-year-old son was fingerprinted at East Bergholt High School for his library card. Mr Adams, a filmmaker from Hadleigh, said:

“When he came home and said he'd been fingerprinted I couldn't believe it. I think it's completely wrong. Children are having their human rights infringed upon and what's more schools don't even have to ask for parental permission.

It's about time more people knew what was going on.”

And the same old "it's not a fingerprint but a number" argument is rolled out yet again, quoted by Steve Howard, Head of Corporate Information and Records at Suffolk County Council.

Steve Howard is probably unaware that he may be responsible for undertaking the massive task to ensure that at the end of each school year, professional data cleansing companies go into each and every one of the 83 schools to erase the children's biometric data when they move from primary to high school and from high school at 16 - but is he aware of this?...probably not.

The full list of the 83 schools is at the end of the article.