UK schools slap a hold on facial scanning of children amid fierce criticism The use of facial recognition technology deployed in a number of school canteens across the UK has been put on hold for the time being after the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) intervened to ask some questions. Some nine schools in North Ayrshire, which is a Scottish authority that includes the Isle of Arran, were …
I said this the first time around when this story emerged but: let's delete this whole silliness around payments by funding state schools to provide healthy meals for all schoolkids at no charge. We have an epidemic of childhood obesity because kids buy cheap crap outside the school gates and because a lot of school meals are poisonous shite. French adults love fast food as much as Brits, but their kids eat like kings in school.
Schools are now mandated to provide healthy meals. They have top demonstrate this. The ingredients in menus have to be analysed to demonstrate the split on fats proteins and starches there is a software provider where a large proportion of its business is in the provision of this as part of a catering management app
It is notable that the LibDems - probably the main political party campaigning for free school meals for all have not uttered a word about how all this could be avoided by simply providing free school meals to all...
Maybe each 'customer' has to be rescanned every year? Maybe as a side hustle by the school portrait suppler?
When I was a lad, the dinner ladies knew all of us by name, and I don't recall ever having to produce anything to be given spam fritters and custard (in separate recepticles). Mind you, we were given what was on offer - no choice allowed. Ah, the good old '70s ...
A neighbour wanted to send regular pictures of her son to his grandmother. She asked me to do a couple of photos every few weeks - this was before digital cameras. His 18th birthday card was a collage of face shots since he was 12. It was interesting to see how quickly the shape of his face - and hairstyles - changed. The major onset was at about 13 when his face changed a lot in only a few months.
The "Kevin" growth spurt causes the face to elongate; the nose grows out; as does the chin. All at different rates and times. Some people go through the cycle of major changes - but eventually end up with an older version of their young self. Others appear to have no resemblance to their young selves.
a number of enquiries ~ or full on complaints bordering on death threats?
As a former food slinger and ITer in Edumacation, the students are getting served in good time, just the 'payment' for said questionable food takes longer than previous (filthy lucre) payment methods. There's your bottle neck...
I up voted. However, your solution was far to sensible as it was taking a step back and addressing the real question.
>I assume there is some reason why we don't do this
Politics and stupidity.
Spending (taxpayers) money on food means there is less to spend on education etc. (ie. the government won't increase the total education budget). However evidence is that children will only get the best out of the monies spent on education if they have nutritious breakfast and lunch. Hence why we now provide free school meals to all Key Stage 1 pupils; but Westminster politics has prevented it from being extended to all primary schools etc. ...
There are some who think that only "the poor" should get free school meals - the state shouldn't be subsidising the better off. However, evidence again shows that children from "rich" homes can be as badly fed and it does them no harm to also get free meals, in fact it helps to "level up" by removing a line of segregation between the 'haves' and 'have nots'.
Ok, from what I can make out, the charge for school meals is about £2.30 per day. That can't possibly cover the full cost of providing them - including space, cleaning services, etc. - so they're already being subsidised anyway.
And by removing a step in the process (payment), the whole operation would become cheaper.
If I remember rightly, the charge is to cover food costs, everything else comes out of the school's budget.
Interestingly, I found this level of subsidy being used in many company canteens. So not an unreasonable charge, if you are to have a charge, however, I believe the benefits that can accrue from universal provision would out-weigh the perceived costs.
I wonder if someone has read some of the Reg comments from the previous article?
I call BS on serving a child in 5 seconds as a consistent average in a school dinner line.
Or are they issuing dinner ladies with cattle prods nowadays?
The tendency in schools to treat kids like criminals never seems to go away, many school administrators seem to share similarities with the chap in the icon.
before his company started selling this to schools. If CRB Cunninghams racks up a huge loss because this is not put into schools then the blame should be put to him.
It would be interesting to see the letter that "97 per cent of parents, carers and children had consented to the use of facial scanning". My experience with schools is that such letters are often phrased as edicts, done deals, that you must agree to else your kid will not, in this case, get lunch. Often: having to agree with whatever nonsense the school comes up with is part of the parental agreement that got your kid into school in the first place.
People need to tell schools exactly where to get off with some of their more ridiculous ideas, instead of going along with it and thinking school is some all-powerful entity that can never be challenged, that we must all do exactly as they dictate, no matter how ludicrous and/or invasive.
Schools exist to provide an education. Not to be proxy parents. Not to be a proxy police force. Not to nose into everyone's business outside school. Not enough of the former happening, far too much of latter three.
It would be interesting to see the letter that "97 per cent of parents, carers and children had consented to the use of facial scanning".
Indeed it would, and the concept of consent is meaningless if that consent is not properly informed. IANAL but given that a "child" cannot sign a contract (for example) I am far from convinced that a child can consent to the use of a photograph without being fully aware of the attendant risks. Having said that I am equally unconvinced that a parent would have sufficient knowledge or be provided with enough other information for their consent to be any more "informed" than their child's agreement.
Given the fact that some people - often (I understand) children - seem to be perfectly happy to post wholly inappropriate photographs of themselves to anyone who asks, it would seem to be clear that on balance the wider population has simply no idea of the risks associated with "personal information" being given away for less than convincing reasons.
Golden Rule of Data: Where data exists there will be attempts to misappropriate it and once that has happened there is simply no knowing how, when, where or for what reason it will be misused. But it almost certainly will be.
I am far from convinced that a child can consent to the use of a photograph..."
Below the age of 13 in the UK, a child cannot legally be asked for consent. Data Protection legislation requires parental or guardian consent until they reach the age of 13.
It would be just as interesting to see the form that parents filled in to give consent for their child to use facial scanning
I suspect the question was phrased in such a way that there was no choice
Something like "We are installing this system, it uses facial recognition, if you don't consent your child will need to make alternative arrangements"
When my son decided to come and live with me in the UK I got him into the local secondary school (called themselves a college).
They had all the usual idiocy (not much has changed in that area over the last 60 years) and told me he was required to have lunch at the school. Considering that I had already seen what they provided (ghastly looking stuff that I would have sent for a chemical analysis) I politely informed them that he would walk home (less than 5 minutes) for his lunch.
They gave me the usual 'we tell you what will happen' cr*p, but it turned out they just wanted the money.
When I told them I wanted to see the details of the deal they had with the only outlet that could provide the (very expensive) school branded clothing they backed off.
With all due respect to the fantastic advances so far, I'm pretty sure it's not nearly precise enough to be used as identification for payments... And then six months later, a kid discovers three other kids look like him and he's been paying for them all the whole time??
And then six months later, a kid discovers three other kids look like him and he's been paying for them all the whole time??
That would then be categorized as "Works as intended".
See, we've invented the automated digital Bully draining the lunch money. All hail to the computer and the algorithms. They are always right.
Take their DNA, fingerprints and photographs because this is obvious child abuse.
I used to skip school lunch and walk down to the nearest shop to buy a bottle of ginger and a packet of crisps. Thirty five pence. I'd give half the bottle of Barr's to the less fortunate. Teachers couldn't touch me because I was top four in the school - I like to think top three.
The idea of giving away a child's biometrics for a slightly quicker lunchtime is Charlie Brooker territory, dystopian and bizarre.
"The combined fingerprint and facial recognition system was part of an upgrade to the catering cashless system... " he said. "However, we will not be using the facial recognition aspect."
Surely the fingerprinting is just as problematic as the facial recognition for exactly the same reasons!
The fingerprinting doesn't actually record a full scan of your fingerprint; it stores a number of set data points that it then uses to match against. Not dissimilar to how passwords work (you store a hash of the password, not the password itself). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_points for a better explanation than I can do.
Having said that, facial recognition is perhaps a step too far, and from when I worked back in a secondary school there's no way 5 seconds per pupil is ever going to work!
Anonymous because I can be ID'd easily by at least one other reader.
Sixty years ago we had "dinner tickets" costing 1/- a day. They were purchased weekly in your form room Monday roll-call - usually a set of five for a normal week. At the lunch serving you handed one over at the dining room. The dinner ladies could concentrate on serving the food - which was a fixed two-course menu for the day.
Eventually that system was improved with tables seating eight boys. Each table would collect "billycans" containing enough for eight portions. A "responsible" senior ensured order on his table - allocated for the year. Some food was disliked for no good reason eg tapioca aka "frog spawn". More helpings for the boys on such a table who liked it.
Only once was there a mass rejection of something - meatballs. Apparently a long gap since their last appearance didn't erase the memory of the previous occasion's food poisoning aftermath.
I seem to remember we paid weekly for school meals. Some tiny amount of coins in an envelope handed in on monday if I hadn't been tempted to blow it on Marathons, Pacers, Spangles, Mint Cracknels and Opal Fruits on the way to school.
Then we would just go and get our school meals on trust, there was nothing to stop a non payer going to get their meal. Hence the Opal Fruits.
> Can't be charging a child the same for a full hot meal, cake and fruity drink as a child who just wants a sandwich.
The school my kids went to charged a flat rate, it meant the child's meal decision was driven by their need and fancy rather than saving a penny or two. It didn't take long for the school to work out a decent menu so that most days kids took the hot meal option.
Its fascinating reading the comments here about this one, and the fact that so far there doesn't seem to be anyone with any actual experience of modern school dinner requirements commenting...
For example, due to the requirements to do more catch up lessons and more interventions, many schools have shortened their lunch time to fit it all in, without the children arriving home gone 6pm. This means schools now need to rush more children through the canteen in less time. However, they don't suddenly have more money to put in more tills or have more staff manning them - so they need to process the transactions faster.
In my experience, having created a cashless catering system that's been running in a few schools for a decade, the time at the till does make a huge difference - if it takes too long having to queue up and then having to process the transaction some children end up skipping some of their meal because they want to get out and play.
So, you then have a choice of options for identifying the children - RFID cards or barcode cards - these get lost constantly, meaning you either have to charge parents for them to be replaced, or you absorb that cost (and therefore meal prices go up), fingerprints - these are OK in older children, but you have the same privacy issues as FRT, plus children are grubby and these are covid-times... Add on the fact that they do not work well with younger children and you're stuck.
PINs are the next option. Some children struggle to remember how to spell their own names, let alone a number as well. Not to mention, the possibility of a child using another's PIN.
Cash isn't sensible either any more, as it has the bullying risk (and the "child buying sweets on the way to school" risk as well), plus it costs schools money to process cash.
Which brings us to FRT - a simple, non-invasive, and quick tool for the task.
I just cannot see the major privacy implications of a school canteen using it to be honest. The data stored is not useful to other uses anyway. Not to mention, it would be easier to just to set up a new FRT database than trying to pull in existing data - all you need are some photos, which we leave lying around all over social media already, and can be pulled from CCTV as well.
In an ideal world, school dinners would just be free for all. But until the government stumps up the roughly £3.4bn a year needed for it, it ain't gonna happen.
The vast majority of kids have no trouble asserting their identity and authenticating it with a pin. Those few who need help with this become known and are given help.
Adopting facial recognition or other biometrics to 'fix' this is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Using technology is not always the right answer.
And yes, I do know something about school meals.
Yes, I read what you wrote. Among other things you seem to think that because of stuff the kids have some catching up to do and the best way to do that is to cut into their lunch break.
I agree cash over the counter is a crap idea - it wasn't done when I was a pupil which is a long time ago.
More recently our school's caterers wanted to introduce id/verification... we were lucky enough to have a choice of suppliers - so we changed caterers. Last I heard a number of other schools in the area have changed too.
Rather a large assumption that I agree with lunch breaks being shortened?
Stating a fact vs agreeing with it are 2 different things.
Schools are making these decisions based on pressure from the DfE and Ofsted.
You still haven't countered any of the points I made though? Just disagreed with schools shortening lunch breaks...
Children cannot give informed consent & their parents cannot consent because they're giving away the right to something they themselves do not possess
For example compare this with sex
Children cannot give informed consent to sex, not can their parents give consent for their children to have sex
Now facial recognition won't get anyone pregnant, but it's using personal information which is potentially damaging and can have an effect that lasts their entire life
Now facial recognition won't get anyone pregnant, but it's using personal information which is potentially damaging and can have an effect that lasts their entire life
All the schools in my Scottish council area (and I suspect most others) use the "Young Scot" card as a payment card for meals. The Young Scot card includes a photograph which is stored digitally by wherever Young Scot cards are produced. Does that induce the same fits of vapours?
In practice, the school I know best is so small that the dinner ladies recognize all of the children by their faces anyway. Oh, the horror.
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