Geelong Grammar gives thumbs-up to biometric rollcall

GEELONG Grammar plans to track the movements of students at its Corio campus using thumb-print technology.

The co-ed school has signed up for the REACH biometric package, which is aimed at cutting paperwork and improving communication.

It has told parents it plans to roll out the digital technology house by house in coming months, saying it will provide clarity around student movement and greater confidence in the school’s duty-of-care obligations.

It will involve the use of a BioPad, which will use biometric data in the form of a student’s thumbprint to verify the student’s identify when they are checking in and out of their house.

Students will check in via kiosks around the school.

It will cover 600 students, who are primarily boarders, and those attending as day students.

Under the proposal, day students will have to check into their house at the start of the day and check out at the end of the day.

Head of campus for Corio Steven Church notified families of the plan early in January.

The news of Geelong Grammar embracing tracking technology comes after Melbourne start up LoopLearn was left reeling this time last year when news of trials of its facial technology caused a backlash.

LoopLearn was planning to trial the technology at a range of government and non-government schools but Education Minister James Merlino hit the roof, saying it would not be allowed in government schools.

LoopLearn, which scored a $470,000 grant to commercialise its product, is quietly going about signing up schools to trial its product.

Its director Zoe Milne, wounded by the furore, does not want to speak publicly but she has insisted the technology is safe and once people are briefed about how it works any fears are allayed.

Like REACH, LoopLearn converts biometric image data into a string of numbers to ensure privacy and security. This means no images are ever saved, only a string of numbers that cannot be reverse engineered into an image.