LONDON, England - March 30, 2010 - Pupils are having their fingerprints taken without their parents’ consent, teachers have warned.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) voted for urgent policy on the use of biometric data in schools at their annual conference yesterday.

Schools use fingerprints in place of swipe cards to save time identifying pupils when they are buying their lunch or during registration. But some are taking data without parents or pupils’ permission, teachers said.

“Parental consent should be compulsory, it’s outrageous that pupils' fingerprints can be taken without the parents' consent,” Hank Roberts, executive member for ATL, said.

Teachers said it was wrong that the Data Protection Act allowed schools to collect biometric data from pupils without their parents’ knowledge. Azra Haque, a teacher at Hay Lane Special School in Brent, North London, said the practice was allowing "Big Brother" into the classroom.

“Schools should involve parents in their decisions to use biometric data. We really do need a strong explicit law in this regard,” she said.

One pupil at Capital City Academy, London, was “frog-marched” to be fingerprinted even though he did not want to be, the conference in Manchester heard. The academy was forced to apologize to parents and introduce an opt-in system after it took fingerprint data without parents’ knowledge.