With the technological ability to gather and store data, the Australian government is creating an online data base of every school child:

“…Photographs, personal details, career aspirations, off-campus activities and student performance records are being collected from all 1251 state schools.

Education Queensland said details of 180,000 students from 637 schools already were online and the database would be completed by December.”

link: Pedophile fears as student profiles go on net

There is no option to being part of this data base. A family who refuses to contribute the necessary information can have a child denied a public school education.

This data base begs the question as to why the government needs, or even wants, such detailed information on their youngest citizens. Are career aspirations of a grade one student essential government information? How does the government justify the time and expense of such a data base? Perhaps the cultural zeitgeist now is to collect all the available data; there might be a possible use for it later.

Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster:  http://flyinghamster.com/