Schools in Bristol are using a secret database to monitor and profile children, young people, and their families. The system is called the ‘Think Family Education application’ and can be accessed by primary and secondary schools, and post-16 or sixth-form colleges.

The Think Family Education application allows schools to monitor schoolchildren and their families’ contact with police, social services, and welfare services like housing and benefits. It monitors and records whether families are in receipt of benefits, a parent has accessed drug or alcohol support, whether a child has a teenage parent or if they speak English as an additional language. This sensitive information is shared without the children or their families' knowledge or consent.

The database also uses an automated system, created by Avon & Somerset Police, which thinks it can ‘predict’ whether a child or young person is likely to commit a crime in the future, labeling them as ‘at risk’ of criminal activity.

Schools have been using the system secretly, without the consent or knowledge of children, young people, or parents. As of late 2023, nearly 150 schools have access to the Think Family Education application, with 107 actively using the system.

This kind of information sharing, and ‘digital police in schools’, criminalizes children and families from global majority communities, and more deprived backgrounds - groups already excessively targeted by police. It increases the suspicion of safeguarding officers in schools and the likelihood of children being further targeted by police and the criminal justice system. No one should be labeled as criminals – by an automated system, or anyone else.

Schools believe this system will help ‘safeguarding’. But there is no safety in a system that secretly monitors and profiles children and families. Meaningful safeguarding cannot happen through surveillance. 

Join us in demanding that Bristol City Council, alongside Avon & Somerset Police, comply with the following:
            
●  Transparency -  Please publish a list of all the schools that have been or are currently using the Think Family Education application. Please also provide details of the monitoring and evaluation of the impact of the Think Family Education application, including whether it has resulted in support being provided to young people and families, or whether, as acknowledged in Council impact assessments, it has led to punishment and criminalisation.
             
●  Consent - No one should be monitored or profiled without their knowledge or explicit consent. All parents and children at schools where the Think Family Education application has been used should be informed about it and parents (and children of relevant age) should be asked whether they want to opt-in to being registered and profiled by the Think Family Education application.

● Police do not belong in schools. The use of police data, predictive algorithms, and all police involvement in the Think Family Education application should be immediately stopped.
            
● Surveillance is not safeguarding. Profiling is not safeguarding. Ultimately, we believe there is no place in our city – or anywhere – for this short-sighted and ill-informed system and that it should be shut down and abolished. Instead, work with families and communities to create structures for safeguarding children built on trust, instead of surveillance and profiling.