TBK is due to start secondary school in September and recently we attended the new pupil induction evening, which overall was a very positive experience.

His form tutor has been at the school for 19 years and was very positive and clearly loves teaching still. The school is also going through a major refurbishment as part of the Building Schools for the Future program and within the next 2 years will have been pretty much been rebuilt and have state-of-the-art facilities.

There is however a big issue that Steph and I have been struggling with regarding his new school and this has been on-going since we first visited 6 month ago. The school operates 'cashless catering system' called 'VeriCool for Schools'. 

The system requires all pupils to have their thumb print scanned on their first day at the school, they then pay for all food/drink in school by swiping their thumb on a scanner. The money is deducted from an account which is topped up by the student who either has to take a cheque or cash into school. (So it's not a truly a cashless system!).

The school claims that by using this system they can eliminate bullying and stealing of lunch money, whilst also saving kids who have free school dinners (and therefore don't pay cash) from being identified and stigmatised (they used to have one dinner queue for those paying and one for those who got free dinners). They also claim that it speeds up catering process as staff don't have to worry about handling cash, plus parents know that kids are spending their money on 'healthy' school dinners and not going to the local chip shop. (They don't mention that this of course means more revenue for the school!).

Most of these are positive points, however we have been struggling with the fact that the school is encouraging 11 year old kids to give away biometric data at the drop of the hat. We feel that doing so at this age normalises such things and kids won't even think twice about handing over sensitive data (something that identifies them for their whole life) by the time they leave school.

About the technology

VeriCool insists that pupil's actual finger prints aren't saved anywhere (the scanner turns several characteristics of the print into a digital file with a string of unique numbers), but there is an argument that should this data be lost or stolen (and we all know how good the authorities are at losing people's personal data), someone could take a child's finger print (from anything) and reverse-engineer the process.

VeriCool's website refutes this, but the wording doesn't go as far as to allay one of our fears:

The light on the reader is used solely to illuminate the fingerprint and the scanning device then effectively takes a photograph (which is termed as capturing the image). On a camera the image data would be stored so that the picture can be reproduced again & again. On the fingerprint reader most of the data is discarded and only a limited number (approx. 120) of random points on the fingerprint are retained. These are not stored as images but are converted using a mathematical process to convert the image data to what is essentially a string of random numbers.

The algorithm used by Digital Persona is unique to them. It would be extremely difficult to "reverse engineer" the process to get back to the image data but even if that were achieved all that would be revealed would be the 120 random points of the fingerprint. It is impossible to "recover" the total fingerprint image. Even though the technology is so robust and even though the data cannot be backward engineered we strongly recommend that all parents are consulted before implementation begins.

The concern is that in the event of a theft or damage at school - what it to stop the school from reverse engineering the process and trying to get a partial (incorrect) match of a print found?

Initially the school weren't able to answer several of our questions:

• Where the data is stored (locally or remotely)?

• Who has access to the data and to what degree have they been trained to use this system?

• What happens to the data when the child leaves school? Is it deleted? If so by who and when? And who oversees this to make sure it happens?

In the past the non of the staff at the school were been able to answer our questions and did their best to brush this matter under the carpet, assuring us that the print isn't saved and that the system is secure. We were also been told that there is no alternative to this system for catering and that it is therefore compulsory. Their apparent lack of understanding made us feel even less happy about this system.

Having done some additional research on the VeriCool website we approached the school's head teacher again to discuss this issue.

The Head has now agreed that if we are unhappy with TBK being registered on the system he can be omitted from the registration process; providing we write to the school informing them of our decision. This however means that he won't be able to buy any food/drink whilst in school and will have to take his own.

We were also told that currently all of the data is stored on a server in the school as they don't have any remote servers and that she couldn't tell us then and there who has access, or when it was deleted and who by. She also told us that within 2 years the local authority will be providing the system from a central location so the information will be stored remotely off-site.

To my mind this implies that Wolverhampton City Council are planning on rolling this system out to many/all schools - it will be interesting to see what (if any) backlash there is from parents city-wide. 

We were not 100% happy with this outcome, but felt is was a compromise and decided to talk with TBK about it.

To clarify, our main concerns are:

• What if this this data is stolen - we have no idea how secure it is, or who has access to it.

•  Do 11 year olds really need to be giving away biometric data in order to each lunch at school?

• Why is there no alternative being offered to those who don't want to use this system?

What other people are saying

We are not the only parents with these concerns as recent news reports show. People different parts of the UK have issues with this system, however we appear to be first parents to raise concerns at this particular school.

Sophie Farthing, policy officer for human rights group Liberty, was quoted as saying:

We don't think it is ever necessary for schools to take this biometric data and that there are other ways of taking information for 'convenience' purposes, such as cashless cards.

We also question what sort of message this sends to children about their privacy.

As a parent I would want to know who has access to this data, what training they will have before accessing it, how long it will be stored for and where.

Since the meeting we have discovered via the VeriCool website there is indeed an alternative for pupils who's parents refuse to let them use the system. Yet the school is either unaware of this or unwilling to tell parents about it, so we now have to decide how we proceed.

VeriCool website:

Importantly, for parents who do not wish to have their child’s fingertips enrolled into the VeriCool system, we have provided the school with an override option, so that these children can still purchase in the canteen, using a manual verification process. This option also ensures that no free school meal students are identified even if they are processed manually.

Ultimately, if TBK wants to use the system we won't stop him, but we will make sure he's aware of the alternatives and our concerns. We always encourage him to question things and not to follow blindly, for his own sake.

It's a hard call to make as a parent because whilst we feel 100% justified in our concerns it does mean that he may be singled out whilst everyone else is using this system. We have to consider his feelings as moving from a small primary school to a large secondary school can be a traumatic experience and we don't want to make this any harder for him.

I'm both surprised and concerned that seemingly no other parent has ever challenged the school over this matter and that the school and it's Governors seems to have implemented this system with very little knowledge about how it actually works and without any consideration for those who require an alternative.

I'd appreciate any other parents thoughts on the matter, especially those who've encountered similar systems in schools.

 

An update...

We emailed the school with our concerns and mentioned that we knew there was an alternative to fingerprinting available in other schools in the city - the use of a PIN number instead of a fingerprint - something we found out from a friend after my original blog post.

The school rang me to discuss this and have said that instead of excluding Jordan from using the system all together and forcing him to bring food from home (the 'alternative' they were offering us), they will allow him to top up his account by taking money to the school office, they will then add this to the 'system' and he can 'pay' for his food/drink just by telling the canteen staff his name.

This is an acceptable alternative as far as we are concerned as it avoids fingerprinting which was our aim. It does somewhat undermine their argument about the system eliminating certain students (such as those with free dinners) from 'standing out', although we're not concerned about this.

Apparently the school knew nothing about the PIN code as an alternative and have tried to speak with VeriCool (the provider of the system) about this today but were unable to get hold of anyone. They have said they will look into this further in September to see whether this alternative can be offered.

They were very reasonable and understanding on the phone - there is already one student who doesn't use the fingerprinting system and just gives their name to the catering staff apparently (they didn't say why), so it's not problem forTBK to do the same.

We're both pleased and relived that we have been offered an alternative and school have taken our concerns to heart without feeling we were being unreasonable.

Fingers crossed all goes well in September! (FINGERS crossed - geddit!?)

 

 

Photo / more reading: The Guardian.

Recognition is always nice, and working for myself whilst I am often thanked by the people I work with/for, it's not as if I get an annual review or 'employee of the month' award, so I was very chuffed with myself when I stumbled upon an article about 'QDOS', a system that measures an individual’s 'digital status' in the UK. According to a recent QDOS report 9 out of 10 of the most digitally prolific personalities in the UK are musicians, and whilst you'd be forgiven for assuming someone such as Bono would be number one, you'd also be wrong! According to QDOS, the number one most digitally prolific person in the UK is non other than Imogen Heap! (Tony Blair and Gordon Brown came in at numbers 12 and 25 respectively).

A QDOS score is comprised of four main components – popularity, impact, activity and individuality. Each component is scored separately and these are combined to form a total QDOS score. Popularity measures the number of people one engages with online and the size of their personal network, impact is based on the number of people who listen/read/view/comment when an individual blogs/posts online, activity comprises the total of one’s digital activity including shopping, blogging, banking, chatting etc, and individuality is how unique one is in the digital world based on their name, age and lifestyle.

So as Imogen's webmaster and gate-keeper of all things online, I am patting myself on the back for a job well done! Although, I'm not the only person that deserves recognition here - there's Imogen herself for always being up for trying something new, Mark Wood (Imogen's manager) for letting us try things and always supporting us, and Tiffany 'the axemaiden' Le, our 'myspace housekeeper' who does a superb job managing Imogen's MySpace profile and it's 300,000+ friends. Having spent the last 5 or 6 years working with Imogen and it's great to see our efforts being recognised - I'm looking forward to retaining our 'title' in 2008! Read the full article here.