Criminal justice and antiracist campaigners have raised concerns over an app being used by schools in Bristol to “monitor and profile” pupils and their families.
The app, which is being used by more than 100 schools, gives safeguarding leads quick, easy access to pupils’ and their families’ contacts with police, child protection and welfare services.
One of the concerns campaigners have is that the Think Family Education (TFE) app includes analysing which children could be at risk of exposure to criminality, which they argue risks leading to more discrimination against pupils from minority ethnic or working-class backgrounds.
Staff using the app have told the criminal justice campaign charity Fair Trials that they keep it secret from parents and carers, and admitted many would be concerned about it if they knew of it.
Bristol city council and Avon and Somerset police, who worked together on the system, insist it is in place to protect children, not criminalise them, and deny it is secret, pointing out that information about its existence is publicly available.
But Fair Trials said the vast majority of parents would know nothing about the app. Griff Ferris, the charity’s senior legal and policy officer, said: “Schoolchildren should not be monitored, profiled and criminalised by secretive police databases. Surveillance is not safeguarding.
“Systems like this uphold existing discrimination against children and families from minoritised ethnic and more deprived backgrounds. This system is expanding the net of surveillance. It should be shut down.”
