News

posted on 13 February 2008 07:19

The UK government is about to introduce a database scheme for every child attending school in the UK. It will be retained until the person dies and provide an education record accessible by educational establishments and prospective employers.

A child's Unique Learner Number (ULN) will point to a record of educational events including exam passes and failures, and expulsions. Government opfficials asserted that it was not a step towards a UK identity card, a claim that will be widely disbelieved.

The MIAP (Managing Information Across Partners) database will have childrens' details entered into it when the child reaches the age of fourteen. IT will contain, they assert, a tamper-proof (educational) CV.

Children are currently assigned a ULN in schools but this is destroyed when they leave and associated data is not visible to prospective employees.

There is an obvious question about whose data this is. Should people whose educational history is recorded in this say have the right, an inalienable right, to say who can and who cannot view it? Many would say that, yes, indeed, there should be such a right and that, further, the default assumption should be that the record is private and should only be seen by the current educational institution, ones that are being applied to, statisticians in the Department of Education, and no-one else at all.

According to a Learning and Skills Council spokesperson the MIAP database had the support of more than 40 so-called stakeholder organisations across the education sector. The government says that the purpose of MIAP is to support the education, training and careers guidance of learners, and not to link it to security, taxation or access to government services.

Many will view this as the thin end of a very, very disquieting wedge.

MIAP is expected to go online in September this year. Separately the government is instituting ContactPoint, a database to containing the names, addresses, schools, GP's and applicable social workers for every child in the UK.