At St Matthew's School in Cambridge, after the library system had been in preparation for over a year, this low-key letter was sent to parents at home time on the final day of term. Fingerprinting of all children was scheduled to begin during the first week of the new term. Two published deadlines have passed and the school has still not started fingerprinting after parents raised some of the concerns listed here with head teacher Tony Davies.

"We have decided to use a thumbprint scanner... We will begin scanning children's thumbprints..."

Here is the full text of a letter written by the head teacher at Bedminster Down in Bristol to a concerned parent:

Here is a sample letter that one manufacturer supplies to schools for sending out to parents. Note that it makes the very misleading claim that "thumbprints are not stored by the system and it is not possible to create an image of a fingerprint from the information that is stored in the library system".

While this is true, it is totally irrelevant and is a very carefully worded statement designed by manufacturers with a five year track history of "managing" parents' concerns to reassure both parents and teachers and to give them a false sense of security.

The system actually stores a fingerprint template - it's a bit like the difference between a drawing and a photograph. If what it's storing isn't the direct equivalent of the fingerprint, then their system simply wouldn't work.

What parents and teachers are NOT told is that there is are international standards including M1 (aka M1/02-0142 or INCITS 398 or NISTIR 6529) and Open AuTHentication (OATH) which allow for fingerprint templates from different manufacturers to be compatible and interchangeable. A fingerprint template from such a system could be read by any other, including systems used by government.

As one data security expert, Brian Drury, wrote: "If a child has never touched a fingerprint scanner, there is zero probability of being incorrectly investigated for a crime. Once a child has touched a scanner he or she will be at the mercy of the matching algorithm for the rest of their lives."

Finally, this letter from a primary school in Bradford is so full of inaccuracies it's hard to know where to begin. Hence the names of the school, and the teachers, have been obscured so we can comment more freely on some of the points raised.

• "This system bears no relation to the police fingerprinting process" - True, if you're talking about messy ink pads and sheets of paper, but it's almost identical to the fingerprint scanning systems that police forces use today. Click here for more about this.

• "The system is fully compliant... with European human rights legislation." Since this has never been tested in the courts, it's hard to say where the teacher got this information. A number of leading lawyers would certainly disagree. For example, Article 8 of the Human Rights Act (1998) states that everyone has the right for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right. Fingerprinting children just for a few library books seems an unjustified, disproportionate and unnecessary invasion of this fundamental right. Click here for more about this.

• "Pupil details will be overwritten when they leave school." The data, including any backup copies, should be promptly removed as soon as a child leaves school, or if the child or their parents change their mind at any point, by an approved professional data cleansing company as required by the Data Protection Act. The data-cleansing company should certify in writing that the biometric information has been satisfactorily removed. (This requirement was confirmed by the Information Commissioner on 9 Feb 2007.) Click here for more about this issue and others.