I’m wondering to what extent youth workers are up to scratch with this ‘hostile’ development, which clearly may involve young people engaged with youth clubs, projects and initiatives?

Parents, teachers, everyone: join the Against Borders for Children campaign in the New Year for our first ever public meeting!
*Find out how we’ve managed to make it this far and what we’ve achieved;
*Learn more about the campaign in the context of the ‘hostile environment’ for migrants and disappearing data privacy rights;
*Help us imagine what conversations about race and migration in the classroom might look like in the future; and
*Find out how you can be involved with upcoming actions!
The keynote will be given by Kevin Courtney, General Secretary of the NUT.

The Department for Education collects personal information on every child in the English Education and Early Years system. This involves 8 million children in England aged between 6 and 19. It involves childminders, nurseries, primary schools and secondary schools. This collection happens through the Early Years Census and the School Census, then is permanently stored on the National Pupil Database. From September 2016, the School Census will include immigration data; the country of birth and nationality of children (the campaign has seen a government u-turn on collecting immigration data on the Early Years Census).

The School Census takes place every academic term, so three times a year; October, January and May. It is statutory data collection on individual pupils and the schools themselves. It is done for all schools that receive government funding including:

nursery schools
primary schools, including middle-deemed-primary schools
secondary schools, including middle-deemed-secondary schools
special schools (for children with special educational needs or disabilities), including hospital schools
pupil referral units (PRUs – for children who can’t go to a mainstream school)
community, foundation, voluntary-aided, and voluntary-controlled schools
academies and free schools
studio schools
university technical colleges (UTCs)
non-maintained special schools
schools for service children overseas take part in this census on a voluntary basis.

For further info go to SchoolsABC

See also the Guardian article, Pupil data shared with Home Office to ‘create hostile environment’ for illegal migrants

Martha Spurrier, the director of Liberty, argues: “This isn’t a data-sharing agreement – it is a secret government programme that turns the Department for Education into a border control force with an explicit aim to create a hostile environment in schools and assist with mass deportation of innocent children and their families. This has Theresa May’s fingerprints all over it.”

The revelation comes after an uproar over plans to include questions on schoolchildren’s nationalities and countries of birth on the annual schools census, which campaigners warned could turn teachers into de facto border guards and stoke divisions in the classroom.