UK Department of Education plans sharing school attendance data with third parties

In September 2022, the UK Department for Education announced that under a £270,000 contract with Suffolk-based Wonde Ltd it would collect data on children's school attendance and potentially share it with other government departments and third parties as part of its drive to raise attendance. A visualisation tool will create an interactive national attendance dashboard to run alongside the publication of fortnightly attendance data that the DfE says will provide "ongoing transparency". LSE professor Sonia Livingstone expressed doubts that the system would work as intended, arguing that school attendance needs a human, rather than technology-led, approach.

https://techmonitor.ai/government-computing/school-data-sharing-uk

Writer: Sophia Waterfield

Publication: TechMonitor

Publication date: 2022-09-02