Education department cancels MoU on student data sharing

Pact with private firm dropped; the government had earlier issued corrigendum saying only information available in public domain will be shared.

BENGALURU: In a big victory for privacy rights, the Department of Primary and Secondary Education was forced to back down and cancel the Memorandum of Understanding signed with a private company on sharing of data regarding schools, parents, teachers, and students.After The New Indian Express reported about the extent of data which would be shared and regarding the opposition raised by private schools, the department cancelled the agreement with SchoolGLink Pvt Ltd on Friday. Interestingly, the same officials of the department tried to salvage the agreement on Thursday evening by issuing a corrigendum stating that only information available in public domain will be shared. 

The order on cancellation of the MoU, a copy of which is available with Express, reads, "Termination of MoU executed between the department and SchoolGLink Pvt Ltd, dated February 3, 2018, along with the amendments dated February 22, 2018. The parties agree that the database provided by the department to SchoolGLink further to addendum dated February 22, 2018, has been returned by SchoolGLink to the department as on the date of termination."  It further reads, "From date of this letter, the parties shall not have any further claims, actions, rights or interests against the other party for any reason whatsoever under any applicable law." 

Earlier, Principal Secretary to the department, Shalini Rajneesh, had tried to push for the MoU at a public forum by highlighting the positive aspects of the agreement. But, even on that platform, representatives of private school managements association did not agree with her and demanded safeguard of the data available with the department.

The story so far 
The Department of Primary and Secondary Education signed an MoU with a private company and agreed to share data of all students, teachers and parents associated with private, aided and government schools across the state. This was opposed by private schools and parents who raised objections about personal data being misused. The Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka had raised a complaint before Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait about this on Thursday and demanded to drop private schools from this MoU. It also warned of taking up the matter in court if the department chose to continue with the MoU.

 "It was a threat and also breach of trust by the Education Department. We already brought it to the notice of the department about parents getting calls from marketing people. Despite that, the department had signed the MoU where they even agreed to share data of private school teachers and students," said D Shashi Kumar, general secretary of the association.

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Contrary statements 
The minister and principal secretary came out with contrary statements on Friday. Speaking to the media, Minister Tanveer Sait said he was unaware of the MoU, whereas Principal Secretary Shalini Rajneesh said the MoU was inked with Sait’s approval as well as that of the Law Department.

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