As part of a “extreme” effort to combat graffiti, students at a Sydney school are now required to scan their fingerprints each time they need to use the restroom.
At the start of term three, Moorebank High School in southwest Sydney implemented the unprecedented idea to “watch pupils’ activity during class time.”
Parents were alerted by the school’s principal, Vally Grego, in the June newsletter that pupils would need to utilize Posiflex Kiosks Biometrics, a fingerprint scanning system, to use the restroom.
‘The system will roll out in Term 3 for the external student toilets only,’ Ms Grego wrote.
‘We are introducing this system to monitor students’ movement during class time and to reduce the incidents of vandalism.’
Students at Moorebank High School (pictured) are being made to scan their fingerprints to gain access to the toilets. The biometric data technology was introduced to track students’ movement as part of a plan to stamp rid the school of vandalism
A parent, who has several children at the school, told the Daily Telegraph there was a ‘real lack of transparency’ as parents were not properly consulted or informed about the kiosk.
‘There was only a tiny paragraph in the newsletter, no notes sent home, no email, only a focus group no one knew about… it wasn’t communicated properly by the school, there’s a real lack of transparency,’ the parent said.
According to the school’s newsletter, the technology was first agreed to by the Community Focus Group on February 8, 2021 before being confirmed 13 months later, on March 13.
The parent labelled the technology and surveillance of the students as a ‘little extreme’ and questioned whether collecting biometric data was the correct response to combating vandalism.
‘It just doesn’t feel real and begs the question, what’s next in terms of monitoring and surveillance of our kids? Surely vandalism doesn’t justify collecting biometric data,’ the parent said.
Ms Grego assured parents of the safety and privacy of the kiosk and said it did not store copies of children’s fingerprints, confirming it was only the biometric engine on the kiosk that could interpret the data.
‘It stores an alphanumerical representation of the fingerprint, a great big long random string which is unique to each fingerprint,’ she said.
‘It is a map of 25 -40 unique features of a fingerprint and then puts it into a data format called a template. That specific template can only be interpreted by the biometric engine on the kiosk.
‘If one were to look at the template of a fingerprint, it would not be recognisable, as the information is a set of numbers and typically encrypted.’
The school’s principal Ms Vally Grego assured parents the kiosk protects the privacy of their children as it does not store copies of the fingerprint but creates a data format which can only be interpreted by the kiosk’s biometric engine (STOCK IMAGE)
NSW Department of Education said the technology at Moorebank High School was used to stop vandalism and not track students toilet use.
‘Moorebank High School is not tracking how often students use the toilets,’ the Department of Education said.
‘The record of who has entered the toilets is only accessed when instances of vandalism have been reported.
‘Parents were consulted and ratified the decision before the fingerprint scanners were implemented. All parents have been notified.’
Students who do not want to scan their fingerprints can opt to use an access card instead.
The school will conduct an investigation into the kiosk’s effectiveness and will upgrade the toilets according to the findings.