Daily Telegraph London 13/12/99
Classroom database to track pupils' progress
By Liz Lightfoot, Education Correspondent
PUPILS are to be monitored more closely than others any where in the world with the aid of a new electronic data base designed to track their progress.
At the press of a key, local authorities and schools will be able to find out how each pupil performed in tests and exams throughout their education, whether they are eligible for free meals and which schools they have attended.
Eventually, attendance and truancy records may be included with the Unique Pupil Numbers (UPNs) plus their student loans and credits on adult/earning accounts. Work to introduce the system started earlier this term, but the Government has delayed the announcement pending confirmation from the Data Protection Registrar that the collation of information would not breach privacy codes.
The Registrar has approved their use by local authorities and schools concerned. But other agencies, such as the Education Department or university researchers, will have access only to pupils by numbers, not names.
A spokesman for the Education Department said the system would greatly assist the drive to improve standards because it would make judging school effectiveness more accurate.
A confidential consultation exercise has found the teacher unions in favour, but concern had been expressed about the security of the system. It will be kept on a closed database and will not be on the Internet. Nevertheless, it opens the possibility of people being able to check educational credentials more easily.
It will also enable the Government to reintroduce the Value-added "pupil progress" measure which it was forced to drop last year. Head teachers complained that some of the best schools were being awarded low grades because the measure judged progress from tests at 14 to GCSEs at 16, taking no account of the attainment of pupils when they arrived at the schools aged 11.
At present the performance "league" tables of test and exam results do not record the advances pupils make because of good teaching by individual schools.
The UPNs will enable the authorities to track pupils from the age of four to 18, making it possible to judge schools on the performance of individual pupils instead of whole years.
David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the system would be a major advance",
"We had concerns over the security of the information about individual pupils, but if the data protection aspect of the system has been satisfied then we welcome it as a way of getting high quality data."
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Robert Henderson
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