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Cambridge
CB1
18th June 2006
Mr Tim Steel, Chair of Governors,
c/o St Matthew's Primary School
Norfolk Street
Cambridge CB1 2LD
cc Tony Davies, all school governors
Dear Mr Steel,
W I T H O U T P R E J U D I C E
Thank you for your letter dated 16th June 2006, the contents of which are noted, and for the promptness of your reply. Unfortunately, your letter does not seem to advance matters in respect of school fingerprinting one iota, as disappointingly you fail to specifically address a single one of the concerns I raised in my letter dated 10th June 2006 (encl).
My understanding of the series of meetings I held with Mr Davies is that, for the general good of the school, and to avoid any animosity which the Head and I felt might cloud the issues, our primary objective was a joint attempt to take what we both felt was the pragmatic step of addressing my profound concerns that his letter to parents dated June 8th 2006, in which he explicitly accused me of making false claims to parents, was defamatory, and to move the debate as far as possible from the school gates to the proper channels. Nonetheless, I would still be interested to know what he thinks the false claims are, on matters of substance pertaining to the case, and am awaiting his written reply on this and other matter raised in my letter dated 10th June 2006.
My discussions with Mr Davies did not cover in any detail the specific issues mentioned in my letter dated 10th June 2006. We spent the time attempting to agree a form of words agreeable to both parties that would clarify matters for parents. Our views on the matter differ to such an extent that we took four hours merely to reach agreement on this. When Mr Davies came to our meeting on Tuesday with a form of words that was substantially different to that which we had provisionally agreed at our two hour meeting on Monday, I suggested to him that you should be present but he expressed his regret that you were at that time unavailable.
Mr Davies intends to start fingerprinting our children on Monday, without the prior explicit parental consent that I have repeatedly sought, and you may rest assured that I shall continue to campaign vigorously against this one specific issue of fingerprinting children, highlighting and paying particular attention to the issues of explicit parental consent, pupils' right to privacy and data sharing.
You state in your letter that the school made the conscious decision not to make the scheme compulsory but I am sure that you will agree this was not at all clear in the letter to parents dated 24 May 2006. You will find that the vast majority of parents on both sides of the debate agree with me on this issue.
Clearly it would be wholly inappropriate at this stage for me to challenge any ruling made by the Information Commissioner, but I should point out that the position he has taken on Data Protection, a view highlighted in Micro Librarian Systems' promotional literature and used to promote a commercial venture, in no way addresses or seeks to address other very serious issues which might affect the legality or otherwise of the scheme.
I am unaware of any society, democratic or otherwise, that has ever sought to target impressionable children for mass-fingerprinting in this way. If you can cite any specific examples I should be very interested to learn of them.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am still seeking comprehensive and satisfactory written answers to each and every one of the issues I raised in my letter dated 10th June 2006, both from the Governors and from the school. As you are no doubt aware, the Department for Education have distanced themselves from issues of legality regarding school fingerprinting, and have gone on record as saying this matter is one for Head Teachers and governing bodies, who have to ensure they stay within the law.
In addition I should be grateful if you could clarify why parents were led to believe that the scheme was uncontroversial when the Head clearly knew of at least one previous legal challenge, and whether the governors were a party to this policy. Have the governors sought independent legal counsel?
Yours sincerely,