- "What the hell? "
Dino Fancellu, Epsom
- "This teacher should be fired."
Edwina Rigby, Blackburn Lancashire
- "This is an outright breach of the human rights of these children! Nowadays parents have to sign a disclaimer to take photographs of their own children on sports days, staff at the schools can't hug a child for fear of reprisal yet this headmaster saw fit to take fingerprints from young children.
Is he still in a job? What did the school governors have to say about this? Or the local council? Disgusting abuse of a position."
Tracey, Marlborough, UK
- "He should be sacked... that was deceitful and on whose orders did he do it?"
Samantha Jones, Bucks England
- "This headmaster should be sacked! This amounts to gross abuse of children's rights. What possible reason would he want children's fingerprints for, are they all criminals?"
Rob Brideson, Salisbury Wiltshire
- "The parents concerned should not accept any retraction from the school. Instead they should take the case to court and obtain a ruling. That will bring this thing out into the open and hopefully pre-empt the fingerprinting of children from becoming an accepted practice."
Richard Crow, Warsaw, Poland
- "I find this item quite shocking. I think that this Head teacher should be sacked and I hope that parents make their displeasure known. If this had happened to my child I would have considered consulting my solicitor."
Judy, Liverpool
- "Just wait till the children grow up and realise that the state has secretly tagged them. I pity the government that has to try and explain to the countries angry youth why they did it. For every action there is a reaction."
Steve P, Leeds England
- "I think this Head Teacher should now start looking for another job before he is sacked. What right has he to take children's finger prints; he is abusing them..."
Terry Stride, Tamworth Great Britain
- "Isn't this a breach of the data protection act in that this personal information was used for a purpose which had not been agreed to?"
Paul, Yorkshire
- " If my children were school age I would home school them."
Susan Kruse, colchester essex
- "Not yet a police state but not far off it. can you imagine the protests if the last Tory Government had suggested this? Where is 'rent a mob' when you need them? The government have no mandate for this!"
John Stretton, Albrighton, nr Wolverhampton
- "We are on the slippery slope to authoritarian government. The next thing will be to get the children to report what their parents political views on various subjects are. This happened under the Communists and Nazis. Be warned."
Brian Clare, Gloucester. UK
- "Wake up Britain, this is not right. The Prime Minister may as well stamp all babies with a bar code at their birth. This is the sort of thing they do to cattle and that is exactly how the government see you."
Alan, Spain
- "Just shows how far advanced the UK has become, turning into a fascist state under our glorious untouchable (by law) leaders."
Anne, Port Talbot
- "Where are all the politically correct social services people, who take kids away from parents just to prove they can. When kids genuinely need protecting from school officials they don't lift a finger."
Doug, Glasgow
- "Should we not be teaching our children to take some responsibility? A library card is hardly burdensome, and must surely be cheaper than a computer system!"
"In 40 years time someone will dig up your record, match it against your ID card, and lock you up because you read "Now We Are Six" when you were only five. Hurrah for progress..."
Henrietta W, London
- "The fingerprinting of children over the age of 10 by the police is strictly controlled under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, and the uses to which those prints can be put are clearly defined. The general sale of biometric technology to other organisations has given rise to the existence of unregulated databases and this should be a cause for concern for us all."
"Where does it end? Could this headmaster decide to sell on his collection to raise money for his school? What guidelines does he have in place to weed out the fingerprints of pupils who have left - surely once they are no longer on his premises he will no longer need them? His method of collection has been sinister rather than naive and he should be made to clean his database and start again in a more honest fashion."
"Under the Data Protection Act parents should have the right to ask him to disclose the information he holds on their children and to challenge any unauthorised or inaccurate details recorded."
Jill, Spain
- "I am surprised that it was only fingerprints... and they haven't taken the opportunity to add to the national DNA database that this government want!"
Mick B, Benfleet UK
- "When I read those words, a chill ran down my back. Is this what we've come to under this revolting government? Anyone care to hazard a guess when we'll see the first 'Labour Youth Movement', spying on their friends and family and reporting back to their teachers? Not long now, surely."
A. Howlett, Manchester
- "Fingerprinting, random drugs testing, how much more ritual humiliation do our schoolchildren have to put up with? Sadly, many parents simply do not see the danger. Wake up Britain!"
Peter Maxwell, Southampton
- "More than 3,500 schools have purchased fingerprint technology, for use in anti-truancy measures"
"My school made do with morning registration."
"Or can the teachers of today not read and write well enough to prepare one of these amazing pieces of technology?"
Ragnar Vagmornasson, Berlin-Preußen
- "Only ONE parent complained - clearly then the others see no wrong in this idiot doing the governments dirty work for them without parental knowledge. Is anyone going to make sure that this person is sacked, sued and the 'records' he obtained by false pretences destroyed."
'Olderbird', Northants
- "Very sinister! This is such an oppressive Country! What is going on?"
Stuart, Plymouth, UK
- "Does this not remind you of the Hitler Youth and the Stasi of old East Germany??"
T Bell, UK
- "Stalin and Hitler could have learnt from the Prime Minister."
W D Smith, gillingham kent
- "Thanks to the Mail on Sunday for highlighting it. Now the other parents are aware they may well like to register their disapproval & disgust by demanding the headmaster be sacked by local education authority. And tell this lousy government where to go too."
Dee Davey, Leigh on Sea
- "I've just spoken to my daughter about this, and learned that my grand-daughter, 5, has had her fingerprints taken. A letter was sent to parents, with the reason being that it's nothing to worry about and for using school laptops!"
Kim, Hampshire UK
- "Olderbird of Northants is correct; the worrying thing here is that parents and people in general are so brainwashed now by the government's totalitarian regime that they have lost any sense of what is right and acceptable in a free and democratic society."
"We can stop this in its tracks be removing the government from office at the next election and then sending a clear warning to their successors not to try to emulate anything their predecessor attempted - nothing less than freedom, democracy and accountability will be accepted and tolerated."
"Politicians be warned... people are on the rise!"
Andrew Murray, Forfar, Scotland
- "Fingerprinting children was going on when I was a child. I clearly remember a team of plain clothes detectives coming to my school (Colinton Primary, in Edinburgh) when I was about 10 years old, and taking the fingerprints of every child. They said they would be torn up afterwards. I am now nearly 78 years of age (in June) and have never been fingerprinted for any offence against the Law, but I would bet my bottom dollar my prints are still on file."
Bill Cowell, Wincanton, Somerset.
- "Not unreasonably people are asking why an innocent child, not guilty of any crime whatsoever, should have his/her fingerprints taken."
"Have no fear, The government has come up with a perfect solution to avoid the issue ever being raised again. They have decided to take fingerprints by stealth. Is that appropriate behaviour for a headmaster?"
"I mean, getting children to do something they shouldn't...isn't that kind of errr wrong?"
'Ken'.
- "I almost feel sorry for the headteacher, but "who" told him that it was not necessary to tell parents?"
"This is the same statement the head teacher at my children's primary school made, having bought a similar system (which I believe was from the same supplier), and only last week I heard from yet another parent whose school wrote a letter to parents stating "We have no legal requirement to ask for permission and will not be breaching any data protection regulations..."
"Since when have head teachers known this legal fact? Certainly not from advice the DfES, ICO, BECTA or government have given - as they have issued no official advice whatsoever. Only one LEA as far as we know has issued any advice at all."
"Schools communicate and send permission slips home for all sorts of reasons but for them not to think that storing a pupils biometric details without parental permission is okay, does seem a bit unusual - unless they are being told by someone(?) that it is okay to do so, as it seems they obviously are."
Pippa King, Hull
- "The fact that this school considered it appropriate to collect biometric data for such a purpose with dishonesty as to the purpose for which it would be used and without making sure that parental permission was given first is an indictment of the Government's policy on fingerprinting; in fact, of their entire approach to children's rights and in particular children's privacy."
Ian, London
- "NO-one has mentioned Human Rights once!! Ever heard of the Presumption of Innocence?? Who is more innocent than a child?"
"There seems to be fairly good grounds for a prosecution under Human Rights Act auspices, as the head has ignored the human rights of the chidren, however it is dressed up."
"It is clear that the government is committed to ensuring that the state knows everything about everyone. What better way than to start with the young and innocent?? After all, this attitude of mind, which accepts that freedom can be defined by others (namely the state or those in authority), has happened before, and it took WW2 to eradicate that attitude. Now we have home grown attacks on the very freedoms we have held so dear, until the government started fiddling with the levers of power!!"
"Shame on the headmaster. Shame on the country, that we actually believe that it is 'alright to be fingerprinted'. Does everyone not believe they are innocent until proven guilty???"
"The message 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear' is regularly touted by ministers pushing the ID idea and worse!!"
"We should say 'You first, minister'!!"
"If you want to get rid of all these ideas, voting for a change of government next time is the way to do it!!!"
'Democrat'
- "I feel extremely angry that people can get away with this kind of thing in a so called 'free' country. I know the Prime Minister is eroding civil liberties and freedom in this country quicker than the Chancellor can screw up the economy but this borders on child abuse in my book. "
"Things like this are trying to fool children into thinking that a "Big Brother" state is the norm. I call it social conditioning, so they're probably less inclined to oppose further draconian schemes, such as ID cards, biometric passports and the National ID Database, in later life. Fingerprinting will be thought of as the 'norm' and 'nothing to worry about'."
"This kind of society is worse than Russia and China in the height of communist rule."
Paul Vigay
- "This is the most disgusting thing I've read all day... Nothing in this world more innocent and deserving of care than children."
"What has happened to people, that [they have] the ability to roll over and accept such a thing as 'the norm' and not even worth debating?"
"Kids don't deserve to suffer because of their ill-informed parents."
"Imagine if you knew a kid who lived with heavy smoking parents, who never opened windows, who always smoked in front of the kid, who smoked in the kid's room, who basically made the kid an unwilling passive heavy smoker."
"You'd obviously be outraged, but if the parents came back saying they didn't know passive smoking was dangerous - what would your line of attack be?"
"In this case, the head's already conditioned the kids that having their fingerprints taken when they have done nothing wrong is perfectly acceptable."
"Why is it acceptable? What need is there for 3 year old kids to need to be able to scan their fingerprint to be able to rent out the book 'Roger Lives With Fred'!" Bear in mind these kids probably aren't aware that for decades libraries have managed perfectly well without biometrics."
"On top of all this there's also the cost. How many books could this expensive and un-needed system of paid for? Why should the headmaster or the LEA care? It's not their money."
"This headmaster should lose his job, be sent to prison and never be allowed to work with kids again. Instead he just gets a little bit of heat."
"We have the horrendous crime of taking biometric data from kids without their parents permission."
'Mr B'
- "Unfortunately, this sort of thing isn't surprising any more."
"New Labour would be proud of this guy... Especially of his desperate attempts to weasel his way out of it."
"He sounds like the perfect Minister for Education."
S. B., Portsmouth, Hants.
- "Sack him."
"He has abused his position. Get him out of that school."
Dave Walsh, Worthing, Sussex.
- "Beware our rapidly developing surveillance society that is growing on the back of fears about terrorism and security."
"While both are important the present governmentys love affair with biometrics, technology and control is leading to a situation where each and every one of us is in genuine danger of being accused of a crime we did not commit."
"In the UK we have always had an undue regard for the infallibilityy of experts but more and more cases are showing that they can be very fallible and that injustice is all the harder to fight if your guilt is supported on so called 'expert evidence'."
"For more than 10 years fingerprint experts in Scotland have been denying that they made two mistakes that brought my daughter to the edge of suicide and condemned a young man to a life sentence."
"Although she has been totally vindicated and he released from prison the experts continue with their denials."
"Unfortunately in our surveillance society when the technology delivers its verdict we are relying on such experts to prove our innocence."
Iain Mckie, Ays, Scotland.
