Open Tech Calendar

Are you under 36, or do you have children or grandchildren? Then you might want to know: Who gets to see your school grades or your home address? What does the government do with records from children with special educational needs, children adopted from care, or what's it doing with the new nationality data collected from every child in state school?

To answer these questions ORG Brighton are teaming up with defenddigitalme and Against Borders for Children for an event all about the National Pupil Database (NPD) and the summer 2017 school census taking place on Thursday 18 May 2017.

defenddigitalme was set up by parents campaigning for improved security and privacy with the use of pupil data. We are delighted to have both Jen Persson, Director of defenddigitalme, together with a representative of Against Borders for Children.

The ABC campaign was launched in September 2016 calling on parents to #BoycottSchoolCensus nationality data collection. The Open Rights Group is one of over twenty organisations supporting the umbrella coalition of campaigners, teachers, parents and activists (including the NUT!) all against the collection of nationality and country of birth data - measures that turn teachers into 'immigration officers'.

We'll hear from both guests about the concerning data collection and sharing practices at the Department of Education, why data must be made fair, safe and transparent. We'll have plenty of time for questions and how you can take action ahead of the Summer 2017 school census on Tuesday 18th May!

What is the National Pupil Database?

The NPD is 'one of the richest education datasets in the world', collected via school censuses since 2000 in England, covering both the personal and academic information across state education. The Department of Education collects this data on a named individual level and shares it (or sections of it) with other government departments, and researchers including commercial companies and journalists. Between 2012 and 2016 data was sent out over 1795 times, from ca. 23 million children.