School students to get a new ID called Apaar. Activists are worried
The new system could push students out of schools while benefiting ed tech companies, activists say.
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In September 2024, the government of Assam announced that it was proceeding with the implementation of an online registry for school students, known as the Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry.
The registry, also known as Apaar, was introduced by the Union government as an extension of a recommendation in the National Education Policy 2020 that the government set up an online “academic bank” to store information about credits that students earned during their higher studies.
Under the Apaar system, school students are assigned a 12-digit identification number, using which they can access their academic records online. Students are required to provide their Aadhaar numbers in order to generate their Apaar numbers.
In October 2023, the Union government wrote to states and union territories, asking them to seek the consent of parents of school students to generate their Apaar numbers, “based on Aadhaar number of each student”. It noted that the data would be kept confidential and that the Aadhaar number “will be masked while sharing the data with other government users”.
The letter stated that the system would “digitally store all achievements of students like exam results, holistic report card, learning outcomes besides other achievements of students be it Olympiad, sports, skill training or any field”. According to the...
