biometrics/fingerprints in secondary school Ricards Lodge

[Abuntu]

Hi I am writing as my daughter is starting a school Ricards Lodge who have said that to pay for canteen they have to have finger prints, apparently this school has NO alternative apart from you sending them in with their own lunch! ok I can do that, but it also includes fingerprints to the school library etc too... I just cannot get my head around it at the moment... I personally do not like the idea of my child having to use her finger to pay for anything and the force they are using to get you to it is horrid... what about data protection? what happens with this data once they leave ? can anyone please shine some light on me as I just find this crazy!! I know the world is changing but this is a bit much to soon and who to matters to me! it has really boggled my head.... I do NOT think any school is allowed compulsory with the research I have done so far, but if anyone knows any different please let me know!

Just ask them as they’ll have all the policies about this. I think you just need to do it, it’s quite usual now and someone can’t lose their finger!

It’s a standard procedure at many schools. It’s handy because a child can’t forget their finger like they may a card! There is nothing sinister about it just an easy way of allowing them to pay.

As them for their data protection policy. The biometric records should be deleted when she leaves school.

One of the important things to bear in mind is that fingerprint biometric authentication does not store a copy of the fingerprint anywhere - it is not a fingerprint identification system. When the reference scan of the fingerprint is made, a digital template is made. Whenever you scan your finger a new template is made and this is compared with the stored one. It is not possible to re-create the original fingerprint from the template, so even if a data breach were to occur, it would be of limited use to bad actors.

Yeh it’s fine, totally standard in schools. As others say, it’s not a fingerprint, it’s just like a password or a card but you can’t forget it or lose it.

Government guidance here

The data gets deleted when they leave. Apart from it being required to do so, nobody wants to be cluttering up the tills' server with yet another 500 useless strings of data each September.

Why do you think your child's fingerprint is so special and requires privacy?

It's standard in a lot of schools. I think it's excellent. No money to loose, spend on other things etc. You can easily check the balance and top up.

I really can't see why a fingerprint causes you so much fuss. Is she likely to be identified at a crime scene from leaving prints? If so lunch money isn't your main problem.

If you still can't deal with it though - send a packed lunch instead.

As above, they don't store a fingerprint, only something like a number generated from it.
Much easier and faster than cash or a lanyard pass. They can't lose or be bullied out of their finger.

Do you suspect your child is a likely criminal and so don't want their print taken?

This was the method used at DS’s high school and as others have said, means they don’t need cash (which can be lost or stolen) or some sort of card (which can be forgotten or lost, and if the latter you’ll almost certainly be paying for a replacement). It was deleted when he left school, alongside his ParentPay account being closed.

If you’re worried, ask the school for their data protection policy. But it does seem to be a common approach around here.

Ask the school for their policy around using fingerprints. What is your concern about it? As others have said her actual fingerprint isn't stored anywhere

Having worked in a school that uses fingerprints, partially stopped using fingerprints during COVID, and has now returned to using fingerprints. The mistakes and errors that occur when not using fingerprints are so much higher. Cards get lost, forgotten, the staff look the child up by name, there is someone else with a similar name, the wrong account gets charged for lunch. Card is picked up and used by someone else. Fingerprints are so much more accurate.

As many others have said, the entire fingerprint isn’t stored, and all data is deleted on leaving. Many, many schools use this and it works really well.
Students can’t lose their fingerprint ( year 7s are pretty good at losing stuff), and a big consideration in my eyes means their lunch money is spent on their lunch ( worked in a different school where kids would get bullied for their money, know plenty where the kids buy sweets and crisps on the way to school and have rubbish quality lunches).
If this really bothers you, we do have one or 2 parents per year who are similarly paranoid and their kids get a numerical code to use instead. Does hold up the whole queue and they do frequently forget but hey.

If the OP is more comfortable with her child having a numerical code rather than providing a fingerprint, that should be OK. I mean to make things even easier, we could implant infants with a chip, like we do cats and dogs. It could happen in the maternity wards.

It's pretty standard stuff tbh. Most secondaries use a fingerprint system to avoid lost/stolen dinner money etc. It also allows the system to recognise data such as free school meals (I remember when I was in school, you would have to tell the dinner lady you got free school meals and basically announce to the world that your family was poor!) If you're concerned because you're secretly living a Jason Bourne style life off the grid then send her in with a packed lunch.

I do NOT think any school is allowed compulsory with the research I have done so far, but if anyone knows any different please let me know!

The government's guidance is that schools cannot operate a "no fingerprint, no food" policy. They have to provide an alternative. However, this is non-statutory guidance so schools do not have to follow it, and many schools regard allowing packed lunches as a satisfactory alternative. Unless a parent successfully challenges this in court, this is unlikely to change. So, as things stand, your daughter's school's policy is acceptable.

As others have said, the technology doesn't store your daughter's fingerprint. It stores a pattern-matching template. This is a one way process - it is possible to construct the template from a fingerprint, but it is not possible to reconstruct a fingerprint from the template. You can ask the school for their data protection policy, but it is almost certainly the case that any template related to your daughter would be deleted when she leaves school.

Do some research into how the technology works. IIRC the data that is stored isn’t the child’s entire fingerprint but a series of markers?

I can’t remember, because frankly I wasn’t remotely concerned about it.