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Students’ data sought for uploading on portal, Lucknow principals unhappy
This data includes extremely personal information about students, the principals of prominent schools in Lucknow say
The principals of several private English medium school principals in Lucknow are unhappy about sharing personal data and contact details of their students as desired by the Union ministry of education.
This data includes extremely personal information regarding students, the principals said.
The principal of a prominent English medium school sought consent from parents before sharing any such personal information with a third party.
In a bulk message sent to parents, the principal said the DIOS (district inspector of schools) has requested all schools in the district to submit data for each student on the UDISE Plus (Unified District Information System for Education Plus) portal.
“This data includes extremely personal information regarding our students, parents’ names, permanent address, contact numbers, personal email IDs Aadhaar numbers, various medical tests/ mental health details of our girls and other such information. Hence, parents’ consent is a must,” said the principal of an all-girls’ school who did not wish to be identified.
The school has asked parents to submit the form before 6pm on Friday (July 28). The school shared a link with the parents to fill the form. It is mandatory for all parents to fill (it), the principal said in her message to all the parents.
The principal of a co-educational school said, “It’s not right to ask for personal details... I hope parents of all boys and girls say no to the above form.”
Many school principals are not willing to come on record .
Anil Agarwal, president of Unaided Private Schools Association, U.P, said, “We really don’t know for what purpose personal details need to be uploaded on the government portal. We tried to reach out to a number of government officials. Nobody has an answer to it.”
An official who asked not to be named said, “To ensure there is no duplicacy in students’ records, the Union ministry of education has asked all private, government and aided schools to update student database on the centralised portal Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+).”
The UDISE+ portal is collecting students’ data from all the schools through a survey to use it as a parameter for policy making, distribution of grants (for government schools) and performance indicator for different national and international-level surveys, the official added.
The process was started a few years ago but now it is mandatory for all schools to fill in the required details.
For now, all the government, aided, private, Sanskrit and Madrasa Board schools in the district have their hands full, compiling data about the number of students with their names, class and Aadhaar number, the schools’ existing infrastructure and many other details on the centralised portal.
DIOS Rakesh Kumar has requested all schools in the district to submit data for each student on the UDISE portal.
“The Union government wants these details. We have requested schools to upload the details,” said an official in the know of things.
While it is mandatory to update information related to the schools’ infrastructure, teachers, enrolments etc, the new module for students was introduced from this session. Schools are required to submit information regarding every individual student including their subjects, educational performance, social demographics and body mass index, along with the strengths and weaknesses of the student, the same official said.
The survey is being overseen by the district unit of Management Information Systems (MIS) working under the district education department.
