Potential security risk - thoughts?
 

Master Agitator came home from school earlier this week with an A4 sheet of paper requesting we (all parents having children at the school) provide information regarding parents serving in the military.

We are to tick the relevant box to the questions:




Parent serving in the military?Pupil's usual mode of travel?Of course the disclaimer goes on to say that the data may be computerised! and used for admin purposes within the council/childrens services and that it may be used and disclosed only as described under the data protection register!

OH HOW SAFE I FEEL! more info to be lost.

Fortunately I don't have to give my address but I do have to give the childs name and class and sign it.

Now I have spoken to the RAFP and they seemed concerned and advised me to throw said paper in the bin which is fair. However, I felt obligated to speak to the school.

Quote ' sorry but we don't know why the authority want the data....we have just been told to collate the information' unquote

I then went to the council who didn't know anything to start off with but promised to phone back. The nice lady did do so and informed me that it is a government requirement to conduct a census of the schools???? but why do they need to know if the parent is in the military??? surely no child should be discriminated against or singled out because of their parenting?

NOW I FEEL REALLY SAFE!

Am I alone in thinking that:
1. I don't know who has access to information about my sons school.
2. This information would identify a particular school as potentially having the children of a lot of service personnel.
3. Identify the school as a lovely little target for some dodgy organisation?

Can they really do this????? Comments and advise welcomed.

A very concerned Agitator

May I suggest that Mrs Agitator, if not serving, writes to your MP to ask him/her/it to raise the matter with the PM, Swiss Des and whichever half-wit is in charge of education this month?

If the MP is mildly hard of thinking or too busy working out this month's expenses, it may need to be explicit in explaining that the compromising of such data (which could be as simple as a child losing the piece of paper on the way to school) represents a security risk - not just IED related but kidnapping of the child (walk = easy to snatch) and attempted coercion of the serving parent.

A similar survey has just been conducted at my kids school - in the heart of Salisbury Plain, so you can imagine how many military families are around.

However, no such info on whether families are military or not is required - the info is purely to help with the school setting out its travel plan, encouraging greener ways of getting to school - eg walk, cycle or car share.

I'd also approach your board of governors with your concerns.

sw

All a bit bizarre!

Sentry

I presume that we can guess which base you are at in Lincs, have you taken this to OC A or the education officer? Aren't they normally governors at the local schools? If not they should know who is. They might be able to seek more information on behalf of all of the military parents.

We've had a similar survey to fill in. Mrs js works on a mil base but is civvy.
On our questionaire there were no queries about where we worked or for whom. We wouldn't have answered those anyway, as they should have all the contact details required. Interestingly we don't live near the base concerned, 20 miles, or any other mil establishment. It was part of an environmental survey IIRC to see how children get to school.

I would defintiely recommend taking this to the board of governors, but as for this:
sorry, why ? This just makes me cringe, having been a school governor, the last thing you want is some muppet doing this for a secondary duty and trying to make his/her mark for the duration of their tour.

I haven't seen anything like this from my son's school.

S_H

Why take it to one of the governors? Or why do we still have service personnel doing governor as a secondary duty?

If it's the latter then it's usually because the local school asks for it to happen!!

Ignore it????

Pilot are we Roland ? Read the first line of the post.

S_H

"Ignore it????"

That fantastic bar to making progress!

sw

25 years ago, question like that would be filed in the round file. I don't see anything happening today to make it less so.

Many moons ago, when I was posted to a certain fast jet base between Lincoln and Boston, we got chatting to the local headmaster about the standard of some of the local amenities like the library. He said they had a real problem getting funding, because the school population and such was officially classed as quite small. When i pointed out that the school was a decent size for the area, he pointed out that the majority of the kids were classed as "transient population" because their folks were in the RAF. We didn't count as locals because we could not guarantee being there for more than a couple of years.
I'm not saying that this is why the school sent out the forms, but by finding out how many kids are from service families they can plan ahead.
Not that I condone it, in fact I'd be tempted to threaten them with court action for putting you at risk of terrorist attack!

In Dorset, they also wanted to know what marital category the parent(s) were...

The school had been directed by the local authority to collect the data. It has something to do with the way schools are funded from local and central Govt.

Now, don't we have a big, new computer thingy with all of our details on that might be able to provide this data.....

Ethnicity Survey
 

Up in rural Cumbria, we were asked to complete similar school census in December (didn't ask if we were military or not) but did ask for ethnicity! I, with a squeal of delight, ticked 'Other - Polynesian', ensuring that our Council met one of it's diversity targets. I can't wait for the next newsletter to be delivered in Cook Island Maori!

However, back to the proximate issue - I would refuse to fill in a form that required the specify if we were a military family; quite apart from the sy aspects, it's no one else's business.

Sentry A

Same here in the South East. Twice in the past couple of weeks a teacher asked for a show of hands from any kids with parents in the military. Daughter put her hand up. Am still awaiting a response from the school as to why.

From my distant past as an administrator in the education field I think you find that the reason for this is so that additional funding can be targetted to the schools with a high proportion of service children. The reasoning behind this is that there is likely to be a transient population of children and that additional funding across all educational items is required to meet the effects of a churn in scool population. Counties like Wiltshire are keen to have regular information on their service schoolchildren population so they can get more money out of central government.
I can see that individuals are right to be concerned at providing the information but it may just help ensure that school their children attend receives that little extra funding.

Roland is quite right. At the secret base to which he alluded one of the educators was indeed copted onto the board of governors.

I was at a cocktail party when I saw her, didn't know she was the educator and governor, and she had been pinged to host the headmaster. As it happens I knew the HM from the other base where Ogre was. Both my daughters had been to his earlier school.

I took him off her hands.

As it happens he had previously asked about service children; mine two were much in the minority. One other reason was so they could be aware when dad, or mum, was OOA or was aircrew . . .

I also know the retired HM of Clinton Park School, he said it was a rare event for someone to start at the school and complete the whole stage of education there. That the school actually needs to ask OTOH is odd.

Mmm, I suggest that the potential cost of obtaining that "little extra funding" is far too high.

This always makes me pi$$ myself laughing. My father was in the RAF and I was born and grew up in Singapore so I always tick Chinese in the box. Technically accurate but not representative, just like this government...