Question
I welcome the Minister’s statement on smart glasses, which I profoundly believe should be banned from all public buildings as a matter of urgency. In the Information Commissioner’s findings about edtech, it already has concerns about the data that those companies admit they are farming on children. My concern is about the totality of the information that can be gleaned about children from across both the technology they use at home—such as their smartphones, including their location, and from apps that they might have, such as menstrual trackers, where children might not understand the importance of the personal data that they are sharing—and edtech. I am concerned that by the time AI recruitment decisions are being made, when the current generation are 25, 30 or 40 years old, the totality of information that could be known about them online will be staggering. Will the Minister take an approach that involves high levels of scrutiny of the totality of information that could be held about children, both from the edtech sector and outside of it?
Answer
My hon. Friend has done a very good job of describing the complicated nature of some of the risks and concerns that will affect this generation of children, the first to grow up online to this extent. It is because of the issues my hon. Friend raises that we are proposing an edtech certification scheme. As I have stressed in response to other hon. Members, it is about not just edtech in the classroom, but any use of technology in education settings, including colleges and early years settings and schools, that captures data in order to improve the running of the school or homework or other services. We want to ensure that that certification scheme covers all those services.25% vibes
Verdict: AMBER (40/100)
The reply names a specific mechanism for the education-technology part of the question: an edtech certification scheme that covers any technology in schools that captures data. It does not address children's data held outside the education setting, which the question also asked about, and it does not say what level of scrutiny the scheme would involve. The questioner would likely need to ask again about those missing points.
How we got there
| Question item | Coverage | Specificity | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Will the Government take an approach involving high levels of scrutiny of the totality of information that could be held about children, both from the edtech sector and from outside it? | Partially Addressed | Direct | The reply names a concrete mechanism, an edtech certification scheme, and says its scope covers any technology in education settings that captures data, which answers the edtech side of the question. It does not address scrutiny of children's data held outside the education context, which the question explicitly asks about, and it does not say what level of scrutiny the scheme would involve. |