2019 Year in Summary

As 2019 draws to a close, it is customary for people to look back and review the last twelve months in detail, or even the last ten years. You should certainly take a look at the review of edTech failures and fallacies by Audrey Watters, The 100 Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade.

But we’re not going to do that for the UK, though there is much overlap and some things we could add. Here’s simply a quick comment on selected points from our work, and we’re focussing on looking forward to what lies ahead for 2020.

The Department for Education, still gives away millions of people’s named and identifying data to companies and other third-parties from national pupil data, without our knowledge or consent. Our core aim is to end that.

So have we made any progress towards safer, fairer, more transparent use of children’s data in education in England? It may feel like not a lot. There were even surprises about what is in it and who it is shared with, and there are more to come this year.

We still need tremendous changes for good national data practice in the education sector in England and to do edTech well, in a rights-respecting way. Our Director, Jen Persson, laid out her thoughts on this recently.

We also need strong enforcement of data protection rights from regulatory authorities, including cross-border. There has been no action taken this year in UK schools or edTech companies, although the ICO has carried out twelve audits of academy trusts in England. We expect more enforcement from the regulator in 2020, not least in eight areas in which we have supported families’ complaints this year.

We await the full ICO response to a regulatory complaint through our legal team on the handling of the National Pupil Database by the DfE, as part of our campaign, Labels Last A Lifetime. Initial findings include that there were wide ranging and serious data protection issues. This backed our findings from our 2018 survey, that parents and pupils don’t know this database exists.

2019 has been about the Baseline Test for 4-year olds and the Multiplications Check that will be added to the National pupil Database. Those expansions will continue to draw criticism in 2020.

The education sector made the most referrals (2,426) to the Prevent programme in 2017/2018, accounting for 33%. We expect to hear in early 2020 what happens next regards the Prevent Review after the removal of Lord Carlile. We continue to review the the data distribution aspects of Prevent by schools, companies, and police.

In December it was great to see the Against Borders for Children coalition recognised for their work, coming third in collaboration of the year in the Good Lobby Awards. The #BoycottSchoolCensus campaign continues into 2020 calling for the data collected to date to be deleted, and regulations revoked. We await the ICO response to data retention on that. Here’s a reminder of some of the history and final moments of a scandalous school children’s data collection that should never have been.

But aside from the questions over nationality data, the school census is still used by the Department for Education to hand over data to meet Home Office immigration demands. That misuse continues monthly. In 2020, we await a decision in full, of its regulatory review and we continue to press for enforcement of change in collection, retention and processing practices.

Our work in the run up to the General Election on December 12th with #MyVote2019UK will continue as we work together with young people, campaigning for ‘the world we want’.

The redrafted Age Appropriate Code of Practice was shared with the Department for Culture Media and Sport during purdah in November, but was not externally. We will see what happens next.

The same goes for Online Harms legislation which some are very keen to push through, even as a Private Members Bill if the government does not. We are keeping a close eye on the potential implications for children’s rights in education, for example in the use of UK products for online behavioural surveillance, such as Fortinet. Their security issues in the last year, raise questions over the fitness and oversight of safeguarding-in-schools under the Prevent programme, as well as ‘online harms’ more broadly.

The Council of Europe will issue recommendations in 2020 to signatory states to Convention 108, with Guidelines for action on privacy and data protection for children in education.

We will launch our own long-researched report on the State of Data 2020: the data landscape in the education sector in England. And we will be calling for legislation to put in place the foundation we need for schools, for the organisations, for companies and developers, but most of all, that our children need for a rights’ respecting foundation for their future.

In terms of organisation, we’ve had some great volunteers, started some strong new collaborations and continued others. We launched our Advisory Council. But we are still to build the rights-respecting world we want to see. It can often feel that we’ve done a lot and achieved little. But we’ve grown this year. We’re optimistic going into the new year.

We hope to see our efforts bear more fruit in 2020 as we start to see more regulatory action and real change in national data practice. But failing that, we will tackle injustices in the courts on child rights to support families’ concerns about privacy and education data.

We welcome your support. You can see some of the subjects and materials from our participation in 2019 events here, and we will be delighted to meet you at what’s coming up in 2020. Or sign up for our new newsletter.

We must say an enormous thank you to the many people who have supported our efforts, both up front and behind the scenes.

Thank you to the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Limited and Lush Charity Pot team for their continued support this year once again, to donors to our crowd funder, and for financial support for litigation.

As 2019 draws to a close, we wish you all well for 2020.