My Lords, I am absolutely delighted to be able to support this amendment. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, I am not anti-edtech at all. I did not take part in the debate last year. When I listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and even having had the excellent A Blueprint for Education Data from the 5Rights Foundation and the Digital Futures for Children brief in support of a code of practice for education technology, I submit that it is chilling to hear what is happening as we speak with edtech in terms of extraction of data and not complying properly with data protection.
I got involved some years ago with the advisory board of the Institute for Ethical AI in Education, which Sir Anthony Seldon set up with Professor Rose Luckin and Priya Lakhani. Our intention was slightly broader—it was designed to create a framework for the use of AI specifically in education. Of course, one of the very important elements was the use of data, and the safe use of data, both by those procuring AI systems and by those developing them and selling them into schools. That was in 2020 and 2021, and we have not moved nearly far enough since that time. Obviously, this is data specific, because we are talking about the data protection Bill, but what is being proposed here would cure some of the issues that are staring us in the face.
As we have been briefed by Digital Futures for Children, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, emphasised, there is widespread invasion of children’s privacy in data collection. Sometimes there is little evidence to support the claimed learning benefits, while schools and parents lack the technical and legal expertise to understand what data is collected. As has been emphasised throughout the passage of this Bill, children deserve the highest standards of privacy and data protection—especially in education, of course.
From this direction, I wholly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, is proposing, so well supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Harding. Given that it again appears that the Government gave an undertaking to bring forward a suitable code of practice but have not done so, there is double reason to want to move forward on this during the passage of the Bill. We very much support Amendment 146 on that basis.
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