The Prevent duty is used to surveil children’s digital activity 24/7 and 365 days a year beyond the school gates. Research using school and pupil data is often joined up with policing and health records at local and regional levels to spot patterns for predictive interventions; things the data was not designed for and for which it is not fit for purpose. National research projects can dehumanise children into millions of data points and talk about them as criminals or victims but rarely as children, and children are left out of the dialogue on how data about them should be used in research of this kind.

Our work here includes

• Scrutinising policy changes in the application of Prevent duty at the Department for Education
• Challenging the use of inappropriate and unlawful uses of data from school records in policing children
• A call for demonstrable transparency and consistent standards in how so-called safety tech is applied to children, and in a consensual approach
• Contributions to national policy work with the College of Policing and Home Office that involves children’s data in highly sensitive questions such as live facial recognition, fingerprinting and predictive policing.