Figures, damned figures and statistics

Following on from the previous post we are looking at the 'joint' article published on the 15th April by the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) and Planet Biometrics.


"Figures come from Biostore, the main supplier of identity management systems to secondary schools. Its client base includes over 1000 secondary schools, and it estimates that well over 1 million students use its finger based biometrics daily. Biostore’s work with schools shows that 2 users per 1000 decline to use biometrics. A 99.8% uptake of a voluntary process reflects the views of most of the public on this subject"


Both articles quote the above which is by the company Biostore who sell school biometric management systems.  They understandably have a commercial interest to state that biometrics have a high take up in schools.  It is taken from their written submission to the Freedom Bill.

• Did parents specifically sign for consent?
• Was it a parental opt out scenario, 'implied consent'?
• Did the parents even know that their children were using their biometrics?
• Is the 99.8% figure an indication of the uptake of children in a compliant school environment or an indication from fully informed parents and specifically gaining written consent?

Without knowing the answers to these questions the above statement is ambiguous and figures quoted should be questioned.  For Biostore to then assume that the 99.8% uptake in schools reflects the general populations view on this is, in my opinion, rather hopeful.


I can only speak from experience, where in my sons primary school when parents were specifically asked by letter to sign to consent to the school using biometrics, approximately 20% of parents did not consent for their childrens biometrics to be processed.  The school biometric system is now not in use.


Interestingly there are 3722 secondary schools in the UK (excluding Northern Ireland) with 3,560,384 pupils.  If Biostore's "client base includes over 1000 secondary schools, and it estimates that well over 1 million students use its finger based biometrics daily" taking the figures literally at 1000 schools that means Biostore, at the very least, has 28% of the total schools biometric market.


Both articles quote that there is evidence that "30% of secondary schools have biometric systems".


Are we then to believe that one company, Biostore, has 93% of the high school market share...? 

Planet Biometrics and the ASCL are literally singing from the same hymn sheet

How funny!  Planet Biometrics and the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) on the 15th April both issued a news item about the use of biometrics with children in UK schools.  It is virtually identical, word for word.  What are the coincidences? 

What I want to know is, who wrote the article?   Planet Biometrics?...because they are worried about sales figures, or the ASCL? ...because they cannot be bothered to fully involve parents with this emerging technology? 

Both articles go on about how it will heavily inconvenience them both to fully involve parents with the storing and processing of their chidlrens biometrics - my heart is bleeding, really.   Although my heart is also warmed to see the biometric industry and schools working so closely, one could say almost psychically, together on this... though quite where the parents or childrens interest is in all this isn't clear from their articles.

On the plus side, it had been a bit slack on the biometrics in schools news front recently so it's nice for them to have jointly given me the opportunity to blog again.  In the next few days we'll look at exactly what the ASCL and Planet Biometrics are saying in their, seemingly, very joint statements and see whether or not it holds up.

Freedom Bill

Without wanting to nit-pick points too much and argue with written submissions to the Freedom Bill Committee, I just wish to point out some facts to balance up statements made on the use of biometrics in schools included in some submissions.

The The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) have submitted a written submission to the Freedom Bill committee:

ASCL: "It is not clear why schools and further education colleges, respectable and responsible public bodies, are singled out in this chapter. If this data [children's biometrics] could be misused, it is surely more likely to be so by other organisations than these..."

Schools and further education are singled out because there has been, and still is, a parental backlash and worries, as posts to this blog will reveal and I am sure the Leave Them Kids Alone website would back this up too. And because childrens fingerprint biometrics do get stolen, potentially misused, as mentioned by one supplier of biometric systems to schools, details here,

ASCL: "School and college leaders are not aware of the use of this kind of technology causing any problems for any young person, nor of any but very isolated concern about its use amongst parents"

Well... no need to go any further than my previous post on this one, as teachers themselves won't use their biometrics, according to one of the biggest teaching Unions NASUWT, as they consider it "an infringement on their civil liberties". 

The Home Office's advice to the Freedom Bill Committee on children understanding the issues of schools using their biometrics: "The issues around the use of biometric data are particularly subtle and complex, and even more mature children may not be able to fully appreciate them. In other areas such as marriage and making a will children under the age of 18 need parental consent. In our view the issues around the giving of biometric data are similar in that respect."        

Okay to fingerprint kids - but teachers won't use biometrics

Unbelievable!  Headteachers moaning about gaining parental consent for processing childrens biometrics in schools when their own teachers won't use biometrics because teachers "consider giving fingerprints as an infringement of their civil liberties" ......Oh? So that's one rule for the kids and another rule for the teachers?

Headteachers have been glittered by the biometric sales industry, spent millions of pounds of our taxpayers money on biometric systems and have been glibly fingerprinting and processing our children biometrics, quite often without parents even knowing about it.  All the Freedom Bill is doing is requiring Headteachers to take responsibility for their decisions to use this technology with children.

MP Jim Shannon in the House of Commons debate on this issue on March 1st, makes the point that it is "clear that parents must and should have a complete veto on the collection and storage of their children's genetic make-up"

And the Government's take on the financial impact is that it is "likely to have some financial impact on schools (administration and provision of alternative systems), however this is balanced against the non-financial benefit of protecting the civil liberties of children in schools and colleges"

Hear, hear - and what Headteacher would want to compromise the civil liberties of children in their care?

Warning for schools using biometrics

SecEd issuing some advance warning of the future implications to schools processing childrens biometrics:

"Paula Williamson, a legal expert from The Information Law Practice, said: “In order for the consent to be valid it must be ‘fully-informed’. A school will need to give clear and comprehensive information to the parents and arguably the pupils in order for them to make fully-informed decisions about whether to give their consent.”

Parents should also be informed who the information might be shared with, for example schools may need to allow companies that run cashless catering systems to hold data, or may be compelled to share data with the police.

Also, schools cannot obtain this permission through an opt-out letter of consent, whereby parents not agreeing must actively inform the school. Letters must be opt-in.

...schools found to be in breach of these provisions face a potential fine of up to £500,000."

It seems that across the world the UK is being held up as bad practice fingerprinting our children in schools.

This from James Heiser from http://www.thenewamerican.com/

"The decision to permit the mechanisms of the national security state to intrude into the most routine aspects of the lives of children as young as four is not only degrading and absurd — it is educating impressionable youths to take for granted that the State will track their every movement, action and thought for the rest of their lives.

 Such needlessly pervasive interference in the lives of children is so scandalous that even continental European bureaucrats understand that it is wicked."

Biometrics for school toilets are here!

Even I thought I'd never biometrics in schools used for toilet access...

 "In one secondary school in West Lothian there is a hand pad system in place for primary school pupils housed there temporarily to gain access to toilets."

This link is now archived here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110728095646/http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Hundreds-of-school-children-fingerprinted.6672785.jp

Biometrics in Schools briefing

Over on the excellent Action on Rights for Children's (ARCH) website is a overview on the use of 'Biometrics in Schools' for the past 10 years in the UK.

A snippet from the report details the lengths biometric vendors are going to, to market biometric technologies specifically at teachers and parents:

"Some companies have engaged PR firms in order to promote their systems. Livewire PR, for example, were engaged by ‘Vericool’ to provide ‘crisis management’ for its registration system and describes its tactics as follows:

* Ensured that all news releases included implementation advice from the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) – a guideline developed in association with VeriCool - [Interesting to know the DCSF was working with the commercial biometric industry to develope guidelines, presumably separate to the guidance issued by BECTA.  Was this ethical given that evidence suggests the DCSF failed to take advice from elsewhere?]

* Used ‘superfan schools’ to highlight the positive benefits of biometrics in education.

* Secured coverage on new school installations within the local media in a drive to educate parents about biometrics and dispel any myths surrounding fingertip technology.

* Commenced executive profiling programme for VeriCool spokespeople to educate teachers and parents about the benefits of biometrics."

Chichester High School for Girls - Why?

Schools are still not communicating too well with parents, as headlines only this month portray - "Anger over school’s bid to fingerprint its pupils" at Chichester High School for Girls where they are assuming consent unless parents inform them otherwise.

Regardless of whether Chichester High School for Girls obtain consent now, they will have to try and collect 1463 (no of pupils) x 2 (parents) = 2926 signatures to continue using it during 2012.

Why would they buy such a system when swipe cards/pin numbers will be far less burdensome for them?

The logical long term implication is that the school potentially scraps biometrics and opts for an easier administrative system or the school uses it resources to collect and monitor signatures related to childrens biometrics they process - either way, what a waste of taxpayers money!

ATL union wecomes the Freedom Bill

The teaching union ATL, Association of Teachers and Lecturers, welcome the provision for biometrics in schools in the Freedom Bill.

Ken McAdam, lead member adviser at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said:  "ATL has been alarmed at the increasing number of schools that are fingerprinting their pupils, so we are pleased that schools and colleges will have to obtain parental consent before fingerprinting pupils."

Gov does Impact Assessment on parental consent for processing childrens biometrics

Over on the Home Office's website is an Impact Assessment entitled:
"Requirement for schools to seek written parental consent before processing children's biometric data". 

It is good to see a document coming from government raising concerns and offering solutions to the controversial subject of processing children's biometrics without parents consent.

It is, in fact, it is the only document that has ever been issued by our government concerning biometrics in schools, in the 10 years the technology has been in used by children.

The previous 'advice' issued by the now defunct quango Becta was issued without any consultancy, knowledge or research into the subject of biometrics whatsoever, legal, academic or otherwise, etc.  This fact came to light in a Freedom of Information request.  

In contrast the above Home Office document outlines many aspects to be considered when using childrens biometrics without their parents consent.

Freedom Bill 2010-11

The Protection of Freedoms Bill was introduced in the House of Commons this morning and part of the BIll, Part 1 (Chapter 2) includes provisions to protect the biometric data of children in schools and colleges.

The Bill outlines the "Requirement for consent before processing biometric information" of children up to 18 years old.

A law pertaining to children using biometrics has been a long time coming and the whole Bill, including the regulation of biometric technologies and children, needs to be got right.  It will be an interesting few months ahead.

Millions being spent on biometric systems

I love Google! Type in "biometric cashless catering contracts" and on the first results page alone we have over £4.5 million pounds spent by two Local Authorities on schools biometric systems, as recently dated as December 2010.

Staffordshire Council have a 24 month contract worth £4 million of our tax payers money to dish out to the lucky winner and Warrington Borough Council are tendering for £259,500, quite paltry in light of Staffordshire's school biometric budget.

I wonder if anyone has told these Councils or schools about the forthcoming legislation that means parental consent will be compulsory in order to use a childs biometric detail... why not put an added job, the school has to do, into the equation? - that makes sense!