The Guardian on Ed Balls recommendations

Database Unsafe

Education Otherwise - Government Policy

Open Letter to Ed Balls





Taken from here.


>>>ContactPoint database to track children not in school
September 17th, 2008 by irdial
We expected this to happen:

1.2.3 Section 436A requires all local authorities to make arrangements to enable them to establish (so far as it is possible to do so) the identities of children residing in their area who are not receiving a suitable education. In relation to children, by 'suitable education' we mean efficient full-time education suitable to her/his age, ability and aptitude and to any special educational needs the child may have.

And here is the true purpose of this entire exercise.

This is the way they are going to get every child in England into and justify the existence of ContactPoint.

.....

The goal of these guidelines is to create a way to sweep up all the home educating children in the UK, identify them, categorize them and put them on a database, together with the names of their parents, siblings, ethnicity and other details. See below. Once again, children who are being educated at home, privately, or in alternative provision should not be subject to being identified for this purpose, since they are being educated quite legally.


And now its even worse than we thought it would be:

By Lauren Higgs
Children & Young People Now
17 September 2008

The national database of everyone who is under 18 in England is to be used to identify children missing from education.

Monthly reports created by the ContactPoint database will be sent to local authorities listing the names of children not recorded at an education setting.

The School Census for state schools and pupil lists from independent schools and pupil referral units will be used to complete the relevant field on ContactPoint. Children not accounted for will feature in the reports, which are intended to help children missing education teams focus their work.

But Fiona Nicholson, chair of home schooling organisation Education Otherwise, said the reports will mean councils target home-educated children. She said: "ContactPoint should not be used for this."

But Richard Stiff, chair of the information systems and technology policy committee at the Association of Directors of Children's Services, said the reports would not change the way councils treat home-educated children: "It is unlikely this will be a tool in the armoury of the state."<<<

Another Invasion of Privacy - The Guardian

And from there (in case the link disappears)..oh, and please note that Jenni mentions that children remain on this site until they are TWENTY THREE YEARS OLD:

Another invasion of liberty. And only the Tories are alertThese databases are like weeds. ContactPoint will overburden professionals –and put vulnerable children at greater risk


Jenni Russell guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 September 2009 21.00 BST

It shows what public outrage can achieve. The government has been forced into a swift though partial retreat over its plans to monitor and license adults' relationships with children through a giant database. Good. But these databases are like weeds. The new children's databases, due to go live in the next few months, are just as intrusive, just as alarming, and, so far, just as little understood.

Imagine that, as an adult, a health problem or argument at home means you are not working effectively. You or your boss decide you need help. Then you find that before you can be offered a counsellor, physio, or executive coach, you must submit to an intensive interrogation about every aspect of your life, from your sexual experiences, early attachments, friendships, peer groups, fears, motivations, drug use and relationships with parents and siblings, to your family's income, spending, history of illness, and its size, culture and routines.

That's only the start. The account of this interrogation is to be held on a national database, and the fact that it exists can be shared with every public service you use: doctors, hospitals, educational bodies, social workers, or the police. Indeed, if you want extra help from any of these services you'll be told it's in your interests to allow all these professionals to read your interrogation, because it's only if they have a holistic understanding of your problems that they'll be able to help you. And to make it easier for them to discuss you if they need to, someone has set up a handy computer file that they can all consult, giving your address, where you work, and contact numbers for everyone else who deals with you.

This is not a distant fantasy. Only one element of this scenario is inaccurate, and that's that it applies to adults. This is the system of intrusion and surveillance which will be imposed on all England's schoolchildren later this year. While we have been worrying about ID cards, the government has been quietly using its statutory powers to collect an unprecedented range of information on every element of our children's lives.

All 11 million children are going to have their contact details, with links to the public services they use and the individuals who treat them, held on the hugely expensive and insecure Contact-Point database. Then, to add to the breadth of knowledge the state makes available on a child, it's estimated that for a third to a half of children there will be depth: the eight-page interrogation known as CAF, or Common Assessment Framework. That's now what the government recommends carrying out for any child who isn't flourishing, and who has additional needs – perhaps due to dyslexia, hearing problems, depression, bullying, or disability.

This information will not be safe, because the systems on which it is housed are too large, need to be accessed by too many people, and are too complex; 390,000 individuals will have access to ContactPoint. Just as the police, NHS and tax credit databases have all been exploited by hackers, criminals and vengeful individuals, so ContactPoint and CAF data will leak.

This move into wholesale tracking is being done with the aim of spotting children's problems early, co-ordinating support for them and improving their life chances. The intentions are admirable. The means – mass databases, a focus on systems and not people, the holding of data on children until they are at least 23 – are not. Most children don't have major problems and don't need this blunderbuss of an intervention. Monitoring all of them is a massive distraction.

Collecting all this data is a huge diversion of people and resources. It discourages individuals from responding to the real child in front of them, and forces them instead into the frenzy of information-gathering which the system demands. In May, a head told the National Association of Headteachers how he went to the home of a pupil in distress and found an alcoholic single parent passed out on the floor. When he rang social services for help, they refused. He was told to carry out a CAF before they would respond.

The campaigner Terri Dowty, who runs ARCH (Action for the Rights of Children), says many teachers find the CAF process so invasive and cumbersome that it makes them less likely to inquire into a child's wellbeing. Where before a head who was worried about a child's exhaustion might have asked a social worker to drop by the house, the prospect of starting a lengthy, open-ended official inquiry into a child's life is deterring them. Meanwhile, social workers and other services are being overwhelmed by data. In that process, the children who really do need the scarce help – those at risk of harm and abuse – no longer stand out. As Dowty puts it, the ratio of noise to signal has gone badly wrong.

At Cambridge, Ross Anderson, professor of computer security, is equally scathing. He says the government is attempting mechanised compassion. The databases are a darkness at the heart of state; a belief that if we could just know everything about everybody, everything would work.

Labour will not reverse this; only the Tories might. They promise to review CAF database, ditch ContactPoint for a small, targeted database, and invest in strengthening people's relationships instead. It's depressing that Labour supporters who believe in liberties, privacy and humanity should find themselves having to cheer the Tories on this issue.<<<<