School
to fingerprint students to
‘monitor
their diets’
September 12, 2014 \ By Kyle
Olson
STOURBRIDGE, England – A school is implementing a biometric system to better track what students are eating each day.
The Express & Star reports students at Redhill School
in Stourbridge, England will be fingerprinted in an attempt to reduce lunch
lines and “monitor pupils’ diets.”
The system requires pupils to press a finger against a
machine which converts the print into biometric data.
This can then be used to identify individual pupils
accounts.
Headteacher Stephen Dunster wrote to parents, “We are
aiming to have a cashless system throughout the school. The catering system is
better for parents because they don’t have to provide children with lunch money
every morning. From our perspective it is far more efficient as it reduces
waiting times.
“We will also be able to monitor what children are buying
to make sure they are eating a healthy diet.”
Some American schools have attempted to implement palm
scanners for similar purposes, but were met with parent anger or technological
problems.
District employees claimed “human error and fraud”
necessitated the palm scanners.
“If the school district needs my signature in order to
obtain my daughter’s photograph and use that photograph in publication because
of a privacy issue, then I believe I should have to sign an authorization to
use my child’s identity … for them to do that,” said parent Christina Allen,
EAGnews reported.
“To hear those words vein recognition program… it’s very
invasive to me,” she said.
The district ended up ending the program because of parent
backlash.
“We failed at communication significantly on this,” said
board president Chris Ihrig. “We got an ‘F’ on this one.”
Last year, a group of New York engineers announced the
development of a “biometric classroom.”
source
