Rising number of CCTV cameras in schools

We will always give credit where credit is due on Big Brother Watch; so massive credit to Dr Emmeline Taylor from the University of Salford, who has conducted a fascinating survey into the number of schools installing CCTV systems.

Dr Taylor surveyed 24 comprehensives in the north west of England and discovered that 23 had installed more than 20 cameras.

As reported by the Daily Telegraph:

As many as 85 per cent of teachers have reported the use of CCTV in their schools and one-in-10 said cameras had even been placed in toilets.

According to the study, some schools are also using other techniques such as fingerprinting, metal detectors, electronic identity cards, eye scanners and facial recognition systems.

Research funded by Salford University said that schools were increasingly becoming a “hotbed for surveillance practices” in the UK as children were subjected to checks for often mundane reasons such as borrowing a book from a library or paying for lunch.

But Dr Emmeline Taylor also suggested many schools were collecting CCTV images illegally by failing to inform pupils and visitors that they were being monitored under the Data Protection Act.

Placed alongside Big Brother Watch's report from last December into council-controlled CCTV cameras – it is clear that the UK is witnessing a massive expansion in surveillance technology.

As Alex wrote last week when discussing the latest case of cameras being placed in school toilets: "Schools are immunising their pupils to surveillance. First they say the cameras aren’t switched on, then they say they’re only pointing at the sinks – pupils and parents get used to the presence of the technology and by the time the cameras are capturing intimate moments, nobody will complain."

Dr Taylor's survey is fascinating – not only for the data or the fact that schools are collecting images without informing pupils, teachers and parents – but also because she has found no evidence that the rise in cameras is providing schools with a solution to the problems (crime, bullying, smoking, truancy) the CCTV was supposed to fix. Her own conclusion perhaps sums it up best:

“The effectiveness of CCTV in preventing and detecting crime remains extremely dubious, and its impact upon more trivial behaviours such as playing truant has not been measured.

“CCTV is often attributed with numerous benefits that often there is no evidence to suggest that it can deliver on.”

By Dylan Sharpe