The Hopes and Dreams Montessori Nursery School, based on a busy road in Islington, north London, used to rely on a buzzer system to admit parents. One member of staff had to be stationed in the office between 8am and 9.30am and between 4pm and 6pm just to let parents in. But now parents merely scan their finger to gain entry each time they drop off or pick up their child.
According to managing director Susan Bingham, it has made a big difference. "I would say without a shadow of a doubt that, considering we are a nursery with 123 children, it has enabled my office to become a lot better and less noisy," she says. "It has given us more freedom to spend time on things that are more valuable to us."
The fingerprint reader system automatically admits parents and registers the exact time they drop off or pick up their child on the nursery's computer. It even denies them entry if they turn up outside of their allotted time slot.
More efficient
Bingham says relieving pressure on nursery staff during the busiest times of day, rather than security reasons, was the motivation for introducing the fingerprint system. "We still have somebody in the office but they are not having to spend the whole hour and a half having to open the door," she says. "They can get on with their workload and answer the phones. It has taken pressure off the office."
There are still teething problems with the system - when it rains parents' wet fingers sometimes do not register on the door reader - but Bingham feels that the £9,800 it cost was value for money.
George Bathurst, managing director of Honeycomb Solutions in Sheffield, supplies fingerprint readers to about 100 nurseries and a growing number of primary schools. Despite fears over the storing of such sensitive information, Bathurst claims that biometric technology is likely to spread. "The growth will be huge because it does two things: it makes you more secure and it saves huge amounts on admin," he says.
The fingerprint recognition systems made by firms such as his are marketed as advancements on swipe cards (which people often lose) and pin numbers (which are frequently shared). Seeking to assuage concerns over identity theft, the manufacturers insist that it is impossible for fingerprints to be lost or used by other agencies, though others have questioned the cast-iron nature of that guarantee.
Fingerprint readers are currently in use at five nurseries in the Kidsunlimited chain, as part of a six-month trial. According to IT manager Kevin Preece, the security of children is one - though not the only - motivation for using the system. "It's a glorified, expensive doorbell but we can verify the person that is coming in," he says. Most of the chain's 50 nurseries still use pincodes but they are frequently passed around, whereas fingerprints cannot be shared.
Risk of identity theft
Nonetheless, the system is not completely secure. "Tail-gating" - where a person follows another through the door without registering their entry - is a big problem with pincode entry and has not been eradicated through using a fingerprint reader. But Preece is looking at enhancements such as an "anti-passback" modification, which stops people leaving the building if they did not register when they first entered.
Kidsunlimited is also examining other uses for the fingerprint reader system. For example, the system can also be used to track staff and alert other sites if one nursery is understaffed on a particular day. Instances where parents are consistently late in picking up their child, forcing staff to stay behind and wait for them, will also be registered. "There are many added benefits it gives us above the standard pin entry," says Preece. "It's not all about security."
As well as nurseries, schools have also embraced fingerprint technology, though for different reasons. In schools, the technology is largely being used as a way of simplifying payment for school meals or trips or in place of library cards (see box).
St Teresa's Primary School in Upholland, Lancashire, uses the data taken from the school canteen to award a trophy each month to the pupil who has chosen the healthiest meals. The fact that credits for free school meals can be uploaded onto the system and pupils can claim them anonymously has also increased take-up of free school meals.
But despite the undoubted efficiencies of fingerprint technology, some civil liberties campaigners have questioned whether it's just another example of the UK sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Peter Atherton, head teacher of St Teresa's Primary School, admits that his first reaction to fingerprint technology was that it sounded "Big Brotherish". Bingham says that the reaction of parents at her nursery was: "That's my fingerprint, where's it going to end up?" But Atherton and Bingham say both they, and the parents they serve, were convinced by the manufacturers that the system is secure. Only two parents at the Hopes and Dreams Nursery have refused to scan their fingerprints and continue to use the buzzer system.
According to Bathurst, controversy over fingerprint readers in nurseries and schools stems from confusion with the government's ID card plans. ID cards will capture and store an image of a person's fingerprint when they're introduced. Fingerprint readers, by contrast, convert an image into a string of numbers or algorithms, which are then stored. Even if, Bathurst says, the number was stolen or transferred to another agency, it would be useless and could not be used to reconstruct the original fingerprint.
The government backs that view. According to the Department for Children, Schools and Families, it is "currently technically impossible" to recreate a fingerprint image from the stream of numbers generated by a fingerprint reader. That same scenario is deemed by the Information Commissioner to be "extremely unlikely".
But such reassurance does not satisfy Terri Dowty, director of children's rights group Action on Rights for Children, who believes the government should commission its own research on the subject. She says that big questions still remain over how impossible it is to recreate a fingerprint, now or in the future. "Your fingerprint can't be replaced - it's not like a pin number," she says. "However secure systems might be now, we have to think about how secure they will be in 10 years' time. Nobody can guarantee security beyond five or 10 years."
The way forward
One academic, Andy Adler, professor of biomedical engineering at Carleton University in Canada, says that it is possible to recreate the fingerprint image from the algorithm. "I've done a fair amount of work on recreating biometrics samples, and it's almost certainly possible to recreate them," he says. "The quality of the recreated image is worse but you get the essential features."
Dowty believes the use of fingerprint technology in school canteens or libraries is also dangerous because it normalises such activities for children. "If fingerprints are being used to safeguard your passport or an ID card, we should be teaching children not to use them for other purposes," says Dowty. "Because if more children splash their fingerprints around, the possibility arises of using them to commit identify fraud."
But with the government telling schools that it's up to them if they use fingerprint technology and the Information Commissioner not voicing any major objections, it seems likely that it will spread.
"It's a very efficient system and it saves time," says St Teresa's Atherton. "I can see the wider picture. I did have my concerns, but having seen it in operation, I was convinced it was the way forward."
THE CASHLESS CANTEEN - NEWQUAY TRETHERRAS SCHOOL
For more than two years, no cash has changed hands at the Newquay Tretherras school canteen. Pupils at the Cornish school merely place their finger on a monitor and their account is debited. In 2006, the school introduced biometric technology so that children scan in their fingerprints instead of opening their wallets.
Children register for the system by having their fingerprint and photograph taken at the same time. They are then able to top up their school meal account at any time at a machine in the school lobby. Parents can also add to their child's account online. "It's truly cashless," says deputy head Steve Dunn. "Parents don't have to worry about their children losing money en route or, more likely, spending it on a Mars bar."
But the biggest difference to the school is at lunchtime, when 1,600 pupils are eating in a 40-minute slot. "You might only save 10 seconds per child," says Dunn. "But multiplied by the number of students, you get people through much more quickly."
There are other advantages as well to the system, which cost £30,000 to install and takes £3,000 a year to run. One is that it records pupils' choices of meals, so that catering managers can pick up on trends and put on dishes that are healthy and popular. The system has also increased take-up of free school meals because the school automatically credits pupils' accounts rather than giving them a ticket, and is therefore anonymous.
Dunn says he was sensitive to concerns about the system, which converts fingerprint scans into numbers, rather than storing images. Only five parents chose to opt out. "We talked about it with the parent teacher association," he adds. "I don't really think it causes anxiety for the vast majority of parents."
