A new pilot scheme will see 8300 Scottish schoolchildren fingerprinted as a means to simplify the day for school officials.

Supporters of the scheme are citing the advantages of the fingerprinting database including class attendance monitoring, better monitoring of library book borrowing and the buying of school meals (and the end of stigma for those who receive free meals).

One government minister even went on television when I was on holiday in Scotland last week to say that a major benefit of the scheme was that when school bullying occurred, they would have the fingerprints on file to say who did what and they would then be able to track down the bully or bullies involved.

As if the teachers weren’t overworked enough, now they have to become some sort of CSI investigators and collect prints at the scene to determine the guilty.  This government minister is delusional if he thinks this idea is going to work.

The whole idea with fingerprinting students is not to have an easier system, it’s to have better monitoring of a person.  They monitor everything, in a single database, which can be recalled at any time.  This is about getting children used to being monitored as a child so that, as an adult, they will be less resistant to more controls placed upon them.

Given the track record of the UK, is putting the information of your child into a single database really that good of an idea?  My biometric data is mine.  I don’t give it away that easily and there is no justification for forcing a child to use this system.