Why does the Welsh government want your child's data?

And why it matters even if you're not one of the ones they're worried about.

The data sharing proposals are officially meant to find “Children Missing Education”, as consulted on here. To do this, the Welsh government wants all children’s data held by healthcare services to be passed to the local authories, who then cross-check against school records and delete those they know about.

Although the consultation responses were largely negative and included objections from the General Medical Council, as well as groups concerned about privacy and families in non-state education, the Welsh government decided to press on with a pilot scheme.

If your child is in a mainstream school, this might not seem like a problem. However, data collected in this way is very prone to leaks, with data breaches from healthcare, education settings, and local government among the most common. Increasing the rate of collation and sharing of data always increases the risk of security breaches, and the drag-net approach of the Welsh government maximises the risk to children of sensitive information going astray.

Along with breaches, inaccuracy in records and transfer errors mean families may be investigated and forced to respond to enquiries when their child is in education. The potential for confusion to lead to intrusive questioning or even prosecution is significant, especially in cases where children attend schools across the border, are privately educated, or have more than one home address.

Even when records are transferred correctly, there are risks. In a domestic violence situation the estranged parent may be able to discover the child’s location; when children die and are removed from school rolls parents may be inappropriately contacted by the local authority; reproductive and mental health services for teenagers may end up passing on data about a child that is then revealed to their parents when the authority makes contact.

All this, when local authorities already have mechanisms to find children who are missing education through the Pupil Registration Regulations and the Education Act which do not collect all children’s data and do not require doctors and other medical professionals to spend their time on regular paperwork. The drag net approach may not even find the children they claim to be looking for, as families who use private medical care or disengage from the healthcare system entirely will not be found.

You know your child, you know their educational status. Don’t put their privacy at risk to make the government’s job easier. Withdraw consent for data sharing, and encourage others to do the same.