Educational Data Futures: Reflections

This volume of essays offers refreshingly diverse perspectives on the state of education data. Overwhelmingly, we learn that, if the goal is to maximise the benefit for children in processing their education data, you would not start from here.

The scope of the essays in Educational Data Futures is as broad as the data gathered – from the fingerprint in the school lunch queue; the lack of clear benefits to children of hotly promoted EdTech tools; the extraordinary obfuscation about what is collected, who owns what, and where it goes next; what education data processing is damaging and what would ‘good’ look like. Encouraged to imagine a better world, several authors tackle the failure of government and regulators to grasp the enormity of the issue while allowing an increasing role for private companies in school settings. Worryingly, it appears convenient to accept services that may or may not work and that most certainly gather data that are so intimate and yet shared so widely that it might impact on the outcomes of a child for a lifetime.

Some essays look at technological and social models that might give more agency to teachers and parents, others look more profoundly at what it would be for a child to be the ultimate owner of their own data. All agree that doing nothing is not an option.