(MORE) EDUCASHUN, EDUCASHUN, EDUCASHUN

Hot on the heels of my post yesterday about our kids slipping down the literacy league table, we are now told that they're getting worse at science too. I especially like Joe Fay's line: "... the nation's youth probably won't be too upset about their unboffinish performance – it's not like they'd be able to read about it after all." Mind you, given the US ranking, perhaps we don't have quite so much to worry about.

EXCUSES, EXCUSES

Two stories from The Register have caught my eye, this and this.

So, on the one hand, we've got to stop our kids from pigging out on their video games fest so that they can get out there and play footie. On the other, according to Goggle-Eyed Balls, we've got to do it so that they can bury their heads in more books. Umm!?!

Usual stuff, really - dimwits trying to establish a direct causal relationship where none exists (and, in respect of the latter, just so much spin). The sad reality is that our blokes aren't very good at footie because they aren't managed very well - lest you doubt it consider the 'reasons' that Terry Venables or Alex Ferguson attribute to their respective teams' failings in the article (they're new slants on that perennial favourite of "Why the trains don't run on time"). Quite apart from that, nine times out of ten, the other lot are much better than us!

And the reason our kids are getting worse at reading is that the Government's/Bliar's much-trumpeted attempts to concentrate on "educashun, educashun, educashun" have had the perverse effect of making matters infinitely worse - to wit slipping from 3rd to 15th in the league table of reading skills.

ContactPoint "DELAYED"

So reports Kablenet. And a good thing too. Yippee!!!

But it is only a delay. And, needless to say, Goggle-Eyed Balls and his crew are trying to spin that the HMRC debacle is only a very minor consideration in this decision - as pointed out by John Oates here.

A few thoughts come to mind. The Written Statement insists that "ContactPoint will be a simple basic online tool" and seek to allay any anxiety by insisting that "No case information will be held on ContactPoint". As ever these dimwits singularly fail to understand that it is possible to infer a huge amount about any given individual from even the slimmest/most basic biographical data. For example, on their own admission, it will include "an indication as to whether a service or practitioner holds an assessment under the Common Assessment Framework or whether they are a lead professional for that child". Now, it doesn't take a genius to work out that, if an assessing "service", "practitioner" or "lead professional" is identified on the database, it becomes comparatively easy to work out the specific area of concern for/of that child. In other words, his/her data privacy and confidentiality has been circumvented.

In addition I've always struggled to understand how it is that a potential total user-base of 330,000 individuals - no doubt of the same calibre as those at HMRC - generates consistency with or confidence in the reassurance that "only cleared staff subject to the highest level of Criminal Records Bureau checks would be able to access the system". And, bearing in mind how adept Government staff have been at losing their laptops (see here), let us hope that those 330,000 people - I'm sure they're all good souls with no malicious intent!?! - can at least avoid dropping their random number generating tokens down the back of the train seat or what have you!

ContactPoint DATA SECURITY

Kablenet, here, and The Register, here, both update us about the above. So ... whoop-de-do. We - and our kids - can now all sleep easy in our beds knowing that the DCFS is going to be looking after the sensitive personal data of our children securely and safely.

But, hey, hang on a minute! Call me cynical but isn't the substance of this - "strict access control", "two stage authentication process", &c - exactly what was meant to be in place over at HMRC? And it didn't help much there did it? Not uncommon with this shower, but in truth this is little more than another manifestation of The Government's technological illiteracy and the "Gotta-be-seen-to-be-doing-something" syndrome that rears its ugly head so often.

CHILDREN'S BIOMETRICS.

ARCH (Action on Rights for Children) have issued a useful report entitled "Child Tracking: Biometrics in Schools & Mobile Location Devices". The Register has an article about it here.

As the Report says : "The whole issue of using children’s biometrics urgently needs far closer examination and informed debate.", not least because of the way in which they are being increasingly used for 'low-level purposes' (issue of library books, school meals, &c) in a pretty much unregulated way. Of course, in the main, the underlying intention of these sorts of schemes is probably well-meaning but one cannot escape the sense that they are entered into in complete ignorance of their wider consequences and implications, especially in respect of fundamental rights. In fact one could say that this, combined with the odious Children's Index (commentary here), &c., means that ID Cards - i.e. adult surveillance - are a walk in the park compared to the degree and extent of surveillance to which this Government has subjected our children.