A new report mapping a child’s digital footprint in the state education landscape in England has just been published. The report, maps children’s digital footprint across the education landscape age 0-19 including the transition year into Higher Education. It argues that core national education infrastructure delivered by the private sector must be put on the national risk register as its fragility has been demonstrated in the COVID-19 crisis and rush to remote learning.

The event that accompanied the launch of the report The State of Data 2020: mapping the data landscape in England’s state education system, which brought together a range of content and discussion for practitioners in education and data protection, senior leadership and DPOs, local authority staff, developers, vendors and the edTech community, academics and activists, policy advisors and politicians — addressing questions and answers across silos. 

Between algorithmic fairness in exam moderation and the rush to remote learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 has raised questions on children’s digital rights like never before in England’s education system. The Report is a call to action.

Speakers included Ben Williamson, Bob Harrison, Bukky Yusuf and Sonia Livingston . You can watch the presentations via the event's website. 

Speaking about his contribution, Bob Harrison commented: "My short presentation was about “A digital future for further education” and it is a particular bitter irony for me that having worked alongside fellow ALT members for over twenty years to persuade politicians, policy makers, Principals and Head Teachers of the value of investing in digital technology for teaching, learning and assessment a deadly virus achieves more in six months. We have talked of these issues before but Covid19 pandemic has sharpened the focus."

• Move forward the conversation on delivering the vision of a rights’ respecting environment in UK schools and colleges.
• How does a remote learning infrastructure in the state education system affect its delivery?
• Do questions of pedagogy and learning matter in edTech?
• Increase understanding of the wider edTech market, strengths and weaknesses of the current UK adoptions, and the implications for children’s learning and everyday lives
• Understand the value of privacy and data protection as a route to to good practice for clarity, confidence, and consistency in successful national and local decisions
• Empower current and future school senior leadership and decision-takers in edTech procurement with a bigger picture perspective
• Food for thought on the roles of ‘digital’ and what’s missing in further education.
• Explore the implications for the future state and society, as a result of children’s datafication in today’s state education and public sector: “Where do we go from here?”
• What do young people feel about privacy and why it matters to them?
• Bridge the gap between practice and academic research; bringing data protection and privacy expertise to a new audience
• Bring different communities together to improve cross-sector understanding, to ask questions that benefit the community, and to share knowledge, common aims and concerns and how the sector can address them.
• We cannot cover everything, but we can kick off some conversations about why and where we need change.

You can watch the presentations via the event's website.