Weak protections for ‘edtech’: report

WELLINGTON: A new report warns the country’s protections to stop big tech companies spying on schoolchildren appear far too weak.

Overseas, the multibilliondollar spread of online learning has triggered lawsuits, investigations and, in the US, a promised clampdown.

A report by The Privacy Foundation released yesterday, said it had found little sign of authorities looking seriously at the risks of ‘‘edtech’’, even though its rapid spread had been encouraged by the Government during the pandemic in response to children not being in class.

Schools are using at least 15 types of software or they can use centralised contracts the Education Ministry has with Microsoft and Google, OIA responses to the foundation show.

‘‘They are very embedded in the school systems now,’’ Auckland sociologist Dr Caroline Keen said.

She had tried without success for two years to get authorities to do a stocktake of the tech in schools, and to regulate.

But the ministry had done no privacy impact assessment or analysis into it, the OIA responses showed.

The Privacy Foundation’s report said this risked creating ‘‘a surveillance environment that records children’s activities and keeps their data for future and unknown use’’ and an ‘‘educational environment in which children are forced to use privacyinvasive software’’.

Report author Dr Marcin Betkier, of Victoria University, said any child’s personal data at school should not be used out of the educational context.

Yet their initial analysis showed there was no guarantee in company terms and conditions, or contracts, that it would not be used commercially.

They had asked the ministry, Privacy Commissioner, Netsafe and School Trustees Association about this, and obtained limited information about the contracts.

‘‘Noone really is checking that the software which is used by the New Zealand schools is creating that safe educational environment,’’ Dr Betkier said.

An investigation overseas in May found nearconstant data extraction and tracking of students from primary age to university — and often few controls over the data.

The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) identified 145 edtech products were making children’s personal data available to 196 third parties, mostly advertising technology companies, in 49 countries (not New Zealand).

Australia was covered by HRW, and media group ABC ran its own checks on the methodology.

‘‘The data that’s mined, it’s analysed by forprofit interests,’’ Dr Keen said.

In New Zealand, calls for equity have propelled distribution of devices, especially to poorer schools, rapidly increasing online access but also eroding the ability to choose not to learn online.

Many companies in the wider market feed personal data to sophisticated algorithms to predict people’s behaviour.

Several overseas studies show educational ‘‘big data’’ has become widely used to predict students’ academic achievements and for ‘‘advancing educational reform’’.

Dr Keen said her research showed New Zealanders were blase about it.

By contrast, the US state of New Mexico sued Google — and lost — in 2020, its lawsuit stating: ‘‘Children are being monitored by one of the largest data mining companies in the world, at school.’’

The Ministry of Education said it was working on improving privacy protections for online learning.

In late 2021 it joined Australia’s Safer Technologies for Schools programme that assesses products’ security and privacy controls.

In a statement it said it was working with them to develop the framework and assessment process to meet New Zealand requirements, and an initial transtasman version should be available later in 2022.

The ministry said it provided Google and Microsoft products to schools for free, paying the software licence fees itself.

‘‘We have analysed Google and Microsoft against our internal privacy and procurement policies,’’ chief digital officer Stuart Wakefield said in a statement.

He declined an interview. — RNZ ➊

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