UK.gov expected to quit controversial harvesting of schoolchildren's nationality data Campaigners have welcomed reports that the UK government is planning to cease monitoring pupils' nationality in its mass school data slurp. The school census, a statutory survey that takes place three times a year, collects a range of information about students, including country of origin and nationality. Civil rights and …
No.
They are thinking about getting a clean load for the next time the data fetishists involved try to foist a national ID card on British subjects.
This behaviour is creepy and smells.
It's another case of the Home Office f**king up and getting someone else (in this case the schools) to do their job for them.
So are we saying that anyone from anywhere in the world can come to the UK and get free healthcare and education?
I'm sure I'll get down votes but that is exactly what we are saying by not checking entitlement to services.
Some people will be thinking that sure it's the right thing to do and whilst I agree it is, there is a point where you have to draw the line because the money to pay for it can only go so far. I would prefer a world where every country offered free healthcare and education but that's not going to happen.
I'm sure I'll get down votes but that is exactly what we are saying by not checking entitlement to services.
So are you actually afraid the entire planet is going to bus it's children in every morning just to take advantage of the increasingly barely funded English State Education system?
I think that would be noticed, even without data fetishist levels of collection.
Or are you suggesting the small numbers of questionable resident children be denied an education, given the fact that's it's the parents who chose to put them in a questionable situation.
Teiwaz, halving the number of pupils would give double the money per pupil with no increase in cost - double the number of pupils and you get half the money per pupil. It's not rocket science, it's basic maths and something everybody should be able to understand. So stop forcing everyone to go to school and only teach the kids who actually want to learn - the rest can go cause trouble elsewhere and stop turning our schools into danger zones of gang warfare.
If you add people who produce nothing but are a continual drain on resources then you will end up with a lot less resources to spread over a much larger consumer base, and the situation will never get any better. Why should we waste time and money trying to teach children whose aim in life is to get on benefits and ride the gravy train for the rest of their lives? And why should someone who never does a damn thing to contribute have a better lifestyle than someone working for their living?
So stop forcing everyone to go to school and only teach the kids who actually want to learn - the rest can go cause trouble elsewhere and stop turning our schools into danger zones of gang warfare.
and what will they do exactly, when they grow up? You cannot pretend "it does not bother me" because it definitely should. Even the most "optimistic" case that little harm is done, your taxes will be needed to maintanin rapidly growing prison population (rather than, say, health care for your older self). Unless by "elsewhere" you mean kick out of the country, in which case you do not seem to understand so many things that I have to give up.
the rest can go cause trouble elsewhere and stop turning our schools into danger zones of gang warfare.
That just makes the warfare worse. I suggest you do some reading on the dispossessed/orphans after WW1 and the steps which countries in Europe had to take to prevent them from being gang child soldiers. In fact, half of modern pedagogic has been developed in that environment. Well run state schools have proven to be the best instrument in taking these kids off the streets and making them normal members of society.
So stop forcing everyone to go to school and only teach the kids who actually want to learn - the rest can go cause trouble elsewhere
I agree, my Gf's son is fucking useless at school and makes zero effort. You can measure his detentions on a "per week" scale. Neither of his parents seem to be able to do anything about this so im not gonna try.
He's just about to do his mock GCSEs and nobody will be surprised when he scores absolutely fuck all.
Then there will be year of futile attempts to goad him into getting his shit together , depending how that goes , maybe he'll score a couple of F's or E's .
But then , get this , instead of being allowed to get a minimum wage job behind a shop counter , these days kids have to stay in school until they are 18!
What will that achieve for him , or indeed for the non-academic but work ethic'ed kids who would have been straight onto fishing boats, bin wagons and building sites.
who knew!
This post has been deleted by its author
> instead of being allowed to get a minimum wage job behind a shop counter , these days kids have to stay in school until they are 18
This is only true, and then only approximately, in England.
You can leave school on the last Friday in June if you’ll be 16 by the end of the summer holidays.You must then do one of the following until you’re 18:
- stay in full-time education, for example at a college
- start an apprenticeship or traineeship
- spend 20 hours or more a week working or volunteering, while in part-time education or training
See the source [gov.uk] for information about Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland.
And here I was, thinking that Vogons simply loved bureaucracy.
John,
All the govt emplyees on your list dont "produce nothing"
Binmen produce empty bins for example.
By that definition, no one in the country is unproductive, Every unemployed person in the country is productive, to quote Stan Smith of Roger the Alien (American Dad). 'inhaling groceries and farting out pudding'
Don't forget IT departments.
What about coders who do produce - produce crap code that over the medium to long term drain resources, financial, physical, and human.
Now, let's start on managers!
What do they produce?
Come on, what do they produce? Eh?
I think what you wrote below could with a bit of imagination be used to argue for forced sterilisation of certain groups of natives, e.g. 3rd generation unemployed. Think of de-industrialised UK
My impression is that the vast majority of people who migrate for economic reasons do it to work, they may then ignore the paperwork. Oh, and I think it is quite feasible to be illegal in the UK.
"If you add people who produce nothing but are a continual drain on resources then you will end up with a lot less resources to spread over a much larger consumer base, and the situation will never get any better. Why should we waste time and money trying to teach children whose aim in life is to get on benefits and ride the gravy train for the rest of their lives? And why should someone who never does a damn thing to contribute have a better lifestyle than someone working for their living?"
... would not give double the money per pupil, although it's tempting to think so, but schools aren't funded in that way. It's based on how many pupils there are in the school, the types of pupils, EAL, deprivation, all sorts. Have a look at https://consult.education.gov.uk/funding-policy-unit/schools-national-funding-formula/supporting_documents/Current_funding_system.pdf for more details. So fewer pupils = less cash in the budget. It makes it very difficult to turn around a failing school, as parents withdraw their child, and every time a child goes, so does a chunk of funding that could have paid for teachers or resources to turn the school around; it effectively becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
> Why should we waste time and money trying to teach children whose aim in life is to get on benefits and ride the gravy train for the rest of their lives?
1. So that they might not but might, instead, find something useful to do with their lives.
2. So that the State can turn to them later in life and say "You're qualified for XYZ so you have to take the job" rather than "We see you have no qualifications and no-one will employ you as a result - here, have some cash."
It is, as you say, not rocket science, is it?
Anonymous Coward wrote:
the rest can go cause trouble elsewhere and stop turning our schools into danger zones of gang warfare.
So your solution is to solve one problem by creating a whole new problem?
That sounds genius!
If you provide less education then those uneducated people will turn to crime to earn a living due to being unable to get a job. Crime levels will sharply increase and sure, our schools may no longer be "danger zones of gang warfare" as you put it, but instead your local street will be a war zone, your local shopping centre will be a criminal haven of theft and you would be robbed every time you walk out of a shop.
Is that really what you want?
Education helps lower crime by ensuring students are able to find jobs when they get out of school, you take that option away from them and they will turn to crime.
Good on them...
Because if you knew your history you would know that most of the third world is the third world because of the British Empire (the German empire at the time consisting of a small sausage factory in Tanganyiki) and western interference ever since that's royally fubared the environment in those areas and even if it hadn't all the knowledge has been lost because of all those British troops accidentally massacring or infecting or bombing or taxing the locals to beyond a subsistence level.
Add to that supporting every sociopathic dictator that hit Asia and Africa and deliberately causing tribal wars for 200+ years and our record is starting to look a little suspect.. As the minister knows, of course, the reason behind the Rwanda massacres tracks right back to British empire interference designed to wind up the locals against each other instead of us. It worked brilliantly - unfortunately no one gave the Tutsis and the rest the memo to stop when they got independence (for a given value of the term) and they still hate each other with a vengeance (and possibly a clapped out Lee Enfield or Marconi Henry).
And if I were you I'd stop whining about fuzzies and the yellow peril in the NHS because if it wasn't for them, there wouldn't ever have BEEN an NHS.
We have, whether we like it or not, a responsibility to these people because we're most likely the ones that put them in the poverty stricken shitholes they're trying to escape and if we didn't - our government most likely supported the dictatorship that did.
Children should not have data (bar minimum necessary medical data) stored about them full stop, be they black, white or sky blue pink. Data should be collected only over age 18 and ONLY with the explicit consent of the person concerned couched in a simple one line question.
Do you consent to xxxxx storing information about you and/or sharing it.
Yes/No.
And use of a "service" like Facebook, the NHS, education or anything else SHOULD NOT be predicated on you giving up your data in order to do so.
It's not the pay, it's the fact that it costs far more for a person in this country to become qualified than most other places. Even nurses aren't simply trained up for the job but have to do a 3 year degree putting themselves into a minimum of at least £27,000.
Plus, I know a lot of native people who simply don't have the work ethic.
"work a 72 hour week so that I can come out with less than the checkout operator at Aldi doing a 40 hour week? Screw that" as I heard one young person contemplating studyng for a career as a junior doctor exclaim.
I for one couldn't give a rat's arse where someone comes from as long they work hard, pay their way and have a useful contribution to society. I'll happily send my native "no intention of working, state owes me a living" neighbours back the opposite way.
the German empire at the time consisting of a small sausage factory in Tanganyiki
Ah, straight from Blackadder Goes Forth, lovely...
On the Dictators and African 'troubles', well, not all the fault of English there though, although they did end up with most of Africa, it was the European statesmen and businessmen who had a meeting and drew up the borders of the African 'countries' that often cut across tribes and merged often historically warring tribes under the same 'flags' - inevitable that once the honeymoon of autonomy had been granted the whole nest would get unsettled at some point and old grudges resurface.
"Because if you knew your history you would know that most of the third world is the third world because of the British Empire (the German empire at the time consisting of a small sausage factory in Tanganyiki) and western interference ever since that's royally fubared the environment in those areas"
Actually, the roots of the problem are the export to 'colonial' areas of sanitation and medicine.
The sudden decrease in mortality, without improving the economy, infrastructure, and education doomed many countries to a slow motion disaster as population growth exceeded economic growth. The resulting ever increasing poverty and dilution of resources precluded investment in wealth producing economic activity - so creating a paralyzing spiral into economic and social disaster.
If reduction in mortality had been left until the economic structure could support a lowered birth rate and general increases in well-being, many of the chronic problems could have been avoided.
@Teiwaz
Where do you draw the line? You say a small number but how do you know without finding out? Illegal immigrants are not documented so are you saying we don't even try and allow access to services regardless? They will not be paying tax as they don't have a tax code.
You have a choice, allow anyone to access services or restrict them to those that are entitled to them. There is no middle ground, there is no "it's only a small number of people", there is no "it's the right thing to do". I didn't make it like this I'm just saying it like it is.
@AC for the last time. Do you know how the school admission system works in the UK? The parents have to provide proof of address, and for many schools, the obligatory part of it is a copy of council tax demand. There is no way to provide that unless you are actually paying the tax. Yes, there are illegal immigrants (far fewer than you seem to think there are), but I very much doubt that they are "usually" sending their children to public schools.
@Bronek Kozicki
Ok then if that's the case why do the immigration service want the information? What about people that overstay visas? When you think of illegal immigration most people think of the camps at Calais however I'm willing to bet the majority of illegal immigration is people that overstay, so yes, their children would be in schools already. Do we give them an education for free? Where do you draw the line?
I would like to point out that at not one point have I said they shouldn't get healthcare or education yet clearly people have made assumptions based on asking questions of opinion.
You know, this is why we got Brexit, you can't have a normal discussion about immigration and anytime anyone suggests we have any problems they get berated, however there are many areas over the last 10 years that have become mostly immigrants. I'll get down voted for this but know this, you are the reason we are leaving the EU nothing to do with old, unemployed or stupid people.
"you are the reason we are leaving the EU nothing to do with old, unemployed or stupid people."
Yep I voted to leave purely on immigration. Jut wait until a few more years of global warming and the exodus we will get when third world countries such as Bangladesh and Norfolk start sinking beneath the waves!
The immigration being talked about is Muslims (and presumably Hindus, Sikhs, etc).
This will increase after Brexit because we'll still have the same number of jobs to do, but the immigration rules will make it as easy for an Indian to come across as a Frenchman. And as Indians will (according to stereotype) work for less than the French and be less prone to going on strike, they'll be employed preferentially. Similarly Pakistanis, Bengalis, Iraqis, Iranians, Chinese, most of Africa... all places with a generally lower pay expectation which will push down wages for Brits, especially less-skilled ones, as they can be replaced cheaply.
So lessened immigration from similar, broadly-identical cultures and more from less similar, harder-to-integrate backgrounds. You can't even racist properly.
>>This will increase after Brexit because
That will be our choice if it happens. I doubt it. We could make it like the Saudis and working here never gives citizenship though if we had to.
What we WILL avoid is that when tens of millions migrate to the EU due to climate change and they hand out EU passports like confetti, they don't get a free pass to the UK like now.
get free healthcare and education?
Healthcare - not a chance. We have had to take guests from abroad into a local hospital or GP Practice. The amount of pestering you get until you show up an Eu passport or other means which entitle you to free healthcare border on obnoxiousness at the moment.
Education - I do not quite see what is the advantage in attending what is one of the worst primary school education systems in Europe. Due to mine and my parents' travel I have seen 4 different education systems. Out of them the British one is clearly the worst. The lowest level of achievement by completion of primary and secondary school. The highest level of stress to children throughout. The highest possible inconvenience to parents. And last, but not least - the highest cost of additional expenses to get your offspring to some resemblance of a proper education standard. By the way - do not shoot the messenger here - in addition to my rather biased opinion this is the official rating British School Education gets from several independent comparisons run across Europe by various international organizations. In fact, their opinions are way more scathing than mine.
This post has been deleted by its author
Not to mention Northerners.
You forgot the sarcasm tags. Next time make sure you put them in for the humour deprived.
The best British software developers I have worked for have been from the North. While Maggie did an excellent job trying to eradicate the culture there, they can be relied upon to get a job done till this day.
If there is an issue it is with Southerners. It is Kent where there are state schools where half of the children do not know their father, the other half occasionally go to visit him in jail. Not the North. By the way - do not shoot the messenger - I am literally repeating a quote from a teacher there.
""And starting us down the road of reducing benefits for those on less than £200k.""
You think someone on £199k should get benefits then? I dont. The changes whilst sometimes harsh on the genuinely needy were desperately needed. The welfare state is meant to be a safety net, not a hammock.
@TheVogon
She did a great job of encouraging the waste of oxygen that's the City of London. A culture of parasites that disrupt the economy for their own gain instead of nurturing it for the benefit of the whole country.
This country's most effective growth was in the '50s, fuelled largely by immigrant labour. A government that had the country's interest at heart rather than the voting intentions of Daily Mail readers would be encouraging immigration and doing its best to create a large, healthy, well-educated workforce instead of wasting its time and our money on protectionism.
"She did a great job of encouraging the waste of oxygen that's the City of London. A culture of parasites that disrupt the economy for their own gain instead of nurturing it for the benefit of the whole country."
The City of London vastly subsidises the rest of the country and is of massive benefit to it.
>The City of London vastly subsidises the rest of the country and is of massive benefit to it.
Cities are parasitic on the surrounding lands, being totally dependent upon them to supply their needs. Thus whilst London may generate vast wealth, it has a duty to distribute it to the rest of the country making the relationship symbiotic rather than exploitative.
The trouble we have with London, is that it has become "too big to fail"...
"It is Kent where there are state schools where half of the children do not know their father, the other half occasionally go to visit him in jail"
Yes but those are in very limited places like Margate which is heroin central. Sort of like most cities in the North but they speak English.
The vast majority of Kent is civilised, white, middle class and with very high standards of schools.
"Because all the gammon-faced crims are down on the Costa del Sol"
Which has a remarkably low crime rate amongst ex-pats. So no. Crimes of violence / muggings, etc. are not exclusive to certain ethnicities of course, but they are vastly more common. That's why it's always been ridiculous that the Police are not supposed to target resources / searches accordingly.
Have you been to a UK inner city recently? - they are stuffed with Muslims and similar foreigners. This isn't exactly new news.
Did you take their personal histories or otherwise view evidence of their citizenship?
I bet you most of those people are UK citizens.
At various points in history you'll get immigration that tends to bias certain groups at that time in history, tending to align with mass exodus from other regions that are undergoing some sort of upheaval - either natural or man-made (war). For example, when India and Pakistan gained independence, the majority of immigrants to Britain were from the Indian subcontinent. Or, for example right now the Middle-East with the recent various revolutions and wars. Or as the Eastern Block collapsed and some of those countries joined the EU.
When those people legally emigrate to other countries, they tend to 'stick with their own kind', so you get areas where they tend to live in, because other people of the same culture/background - even relatives who also emigrated - live there.
And when this happens, like in any other region of present day UK, the accents/dialects/languages of those immigrants tends to persist - even evolve - for generations, even tho they are citizens of the UK, with jobs, contributing taxes, perhaps even 3rd of 4th (or more) generation UK-born.
Therefore, the colour of their skin, the language they are speaking, the accents they speak with, the religions they follow, the company they keep (other citizens of the same ethnicity/religion/ancestral origin), can in no way be used as a guide as to whether they are foreigners or not.
Your attitude is nothing more than an attempt to justify rank discrimination, whether racial, cultural, or religious.
>>I bet you most of those people are UK citizens
But still foreigners in culture and behaviour and often language, and that's what they will always be viewed as to the indigenous population.
>>Therefore, the colour of their skin, the language they are speaking, the accents they speak with, the religions they follow, the company they keep (other citizens of the same ethnicity/religion/ancestral origin), can in no way be used as a guide as to whether they are foreigners or not.
Yes it can regardless of if you hold the same views. See above.
>>Your attitude is nothing more than an attempt to justify rank discrimination, whether racial, cultural, or religious.
No one is trying to justify it - they are just noting that it is the reality.
>> "So are we saying that anyone from anywhere in the world can come to the UK and get free healthcare >> and education?"
> Have you been to a UK inner city recently? - they are stuffed with Muslims and similar foreigners. This isn't exactly new news.
Seriously, who the fuck upvoted this rascist drivel?
So are we saying that anyone from anywhere in the world can come to the UK and get free healthcare and education?
No, we are saying that the Home Office is so bad at what it does that it has to press gang schools and the NHS as into being immigration officers.
Most kids have parents, therefore foreign resident families should already be known to the Home Office.
It's in the interest of the country not to drive sick away from healthcare as that's how diseases get spread around.
Finally today's Grauniad has yet another story about a Windrush immigrant who is here legally being thrown out of his job because he couldn't provide a biometric ID, and the Home Office refuse to give him a biometric ID because he can't provide four pieces of official correspondence for each year of his residency, yet under the 1973 immigration law he's here under he doesn't need to provide any documentation at all.
So when the Home Office finally manage to stop being completely dysfunctional and we have some figures instead of wild politically-driven guesstimates then we can talk about if anyone in the world is coming to the UK free healthcare and education.
The right to education (or NHS healthcare) is not based on nationality but on residency.
A British Citizen resident in Argentina does not have the right to NHS treatment free at the point of care because they are not paying taxes in the UK. A non-British citizen living in the UK has the right the NHS treatment free of charge, provided they are a UK resident and thus pay taxes in the UK. * Why would education be any different? Except, of course, that people are less likely to require emergency education while on holiday.
The whole issue could be solved by schools requiring proof of residency when enrolling a child (something I assume already happens in situations where catchment areas are involved).
* (There is an additional scenario for non-resident EU citizens visiting other EU countries. They are not resident and so don't pay taxes in the that country but thanks to EU agreements a Spanish tourist that needs medical attention after having visited Madame Tussaud's can access NHS healthcare if they have an EHIC card. Or a British tourist falling ill in Lourdes can access French free healthcare if they have an EHIC card. The local healthcare system then sends a bill to the visitor's healthcare system).
Schools are there to educate. Hospitals to heal.
It is not their jobs to police immigration status, and to the school it shouldn't matter their immigration status or nationality - they just need to educate.
If there are immigration issues, other parts of government can deal with it, and the resolution applied fairly. If it means being deported, then take the child out of school as close to the deportation date. They deserve an education regardless.
My understanding is this was introduced not to stop children of undocumented adults accessing education, but families who have a remarkable number of boys who arrive fully gestated at age three with nary a sign of pregnancy from any of the wives. The boys access a UK primary education, but seldom continue to secondary education.
It seems very easy to swap children travelling on a child's passport (for example, young girls have a tendency to go on holiday over the summer and return as boys).
boys who arrive fully gestated at age three with nary a sign of pregnancy from any of the wives
How can they tell?
The possibility that a half-formed fetus might be the norm for admittance to State Education is a little disturbing, but it would explain some of our politicians, although I think most of them were products of the Private schools as the bureaucracy has long since become an Autocracy.
As is checking incoming ladies for signs of having given birth.
The possibility that a half-formed fetus might be the norm for admittance to State Education is a little disturbing...
I can't see why... Half formed foetuses are running most government departments as it is..
Either that or Amber Rudd is an alien/human hybrid..
They mostly come at night, mostly...
That's gonna be one embarrassed face hugger!
I seem to remember looking this up when we got the questionnaire: the school was legally required to ask the parents, but parents were not legally required to answer any questions. To make life easier for the school, which is not to blame, I did fill in the questionnaire, but I did it in an uninformative way, selecting "N/A" and "other" and writing in "human", and so on. I suppose it's good that they can now save a bit of disc space by deleting my response.
I don't think you understand the severity of this information being available in the public record. It's a useful statistic for the opposition, not the government. It's therefore politically inconvenient and must be made to vanish, especially if you think that the number might be higher than generally expected by the population at large.
It's only a useful statistic for the government if they have reasonable expectation that the number is considerably smaller than that expected by the Daily Mail.
Given that you aren't required to fill it out correctly (ie, no meaningful fact checking) and people here illegally would realistically be expected to lie about that on an offical form it's not like the details are realistically usable for immigration control.
>It's a useful statistic for the opposition, not the government.
It is going to be interesting how the various lobby groups get around the absence of this data in the dataset. Suddenly there are no underachieving pupils from whichever minority group is in the spotlight. nor can it reliably be said that the school system is failing any particular ethnic group...
Any kids that are enrolled in English as a Second Language class are easy to classify. Schools may also mark when certain parents cannot read or speak English and need documents in another language or a translator.
Knowing how many kids that are in the system whose primary language is not English (and what their mother tongue is) helps schools plan what resources they need to teach them. If they aren't allowed to ask or know that information, they might as well put them all in one classroom and give them some sort of government employment sorting buttons or something.
Is the article is really about privacy concerning your origins, it's not about healthcare, yet most of the comments are about migrants (who are probably criminals according to some of you) sponging or using frontline services???
Privacy. Privacy of everyone. So don't ask me if I'm white British,afro caribbean,Indian, Asian, male, female next time. Just take everyone to be sexless and possibly from planet Earth for absolutely everything: schooling, job interview, healthcare, and any other occasion when an authority thinks it has the right to know where I'm from. That way we never know who is doing what, where and when.
Hell, yeh, let's just not know anything about anyone, then UK can get back the control it's already lost.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
