From Playground to Database: child data in education

"In England's schools, children are not only pupils but also data subjects. From the moment they are born, a digital record begins to take shape - one that will follow them through nursery, primary school, secondary education, and in many cases well into adulthood. What was once a matter of paper registers and filing cabinets has become a complex infrastructure of digital systems, databases, and analytics tools, managed by both the state and private companies, for AI, surveillance, and more."

"Education has always required some record-keeping, but the scale and permanence of today's systems are new. A child's background, behaviour, health, and even predicted future performance are logged, shared, and sometimes resold. This information flows through networks of schools, local authorities, social services, and commercial vendors, often invisibly to the families involved. For children, the act of simply showing up to school now generates streams of data that may shape how they are understood, treated, and categorised by institutions."

A lifelong digital record for children in England begins at birth and accumulates through nursery, primary, and secondary education, often continuing into adulthood. Personal and administrative information is captured during admissions and assigned to a persistent unique pupil number. Educational attainment, background, behaviour, health, and predictive assessments are logged and linked across schools, local authorities, social services, and commercial vendors. Data flows invisibly between public and private systems, is used for analytics, AI, and surveillance, and can be shared or resold. Inaccuracies such as guessed ethnicity occur, and routine attendance generates institutional profiles that shape treatment and categorisation.

Read at Privacy International