'Children should have names, not numbers'

24 Feb 2010, 10:12 am   -   Source: AAP/SBS
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The opposition has slammed a plan to introduce student tracking numbers for every child in Australia.

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Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said he was concerned about any proposal that appeared to commodify children, after the government announced a plan to introduce student tracking numbers.

"Children should have names not numbers," he told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

"People have names and I think that it ought to be possible to identify people's performance based on their names, based on who they are."

The public was always rightly suspicious of governments attempting to introduce some kind of identification card by the back door, Mr Abbott said.

Liberal backbencher Stuart Robert said his four-year-old son had a name, not a number.

"My initial concern is my little boy is not a number," he said.

Labor backbencher Sharon Bird said students in their final two years of school already had an identity number.

"It allows parents to have that information and follow it through and not have a shoe box where you have kept all the paper copies of their reports," she said.

"It is just a sensible reform I think that parents and schools will very much welcome."

Education Minister Julia Gillard said the numbers were there to protect childrens' privacy, and track their progress as they moved between schools and states.

She added that numbers were necessary as the same first and last-name combinations were held by more than one child in Australia.

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