Parents flush out cameras from school toilets over privacy fears

Published on Friday 18 March 2011 18:20

TWO secondary schools in West Lothian are set to be forced to remove CCTV cameras from the pupil toilets after concerns were raised by parents.

West Calder High and Whitburn Academy have cameras covering the sink areas in toilets, but West Lothian Council is reviewing its guidelines following "a small number of complaints and concerns".

It launched a consultation and the new rules, if voted through at a meeting tomorrow, would confine cameras to monitoring the doors of toilets.

The council also says CCTV would now only be installed in "sensitive" areas with the support of parent councils and that it would not be moved to other positions. The guidelines are the same for both primary and secondary schools.

Father-of-three Martin Malone, 37, from Bathgate, has two children at West Lothian schools.

He said: "I can't go to a school play or a football game and take pictures or video my children, but they want to film them in toilets? Are they having a laugh? There's no way my children should be filmed in a toilet. Who would have had access to these images? What if someone wanted to use them for devious purposes?"

The Local Negotiating Committee for Teachers endorsed removing cameras from toilets, but the parent councils at Broxburn Academy, Bellsquarry Primary, Kirkhill Primary and Windyknowe Primary said the benefits outweighed any potential privacy issues.

The headteachers at schools where cameras were already installed said they deterred violent behaviour, vandalism and smoking and gave the children an "increased sense of security".

But Dan Hamilton, from Big Brother Watch, which produces investigative research papers on the erosion of civil liberties, remained concerned.

He said: "Any right-thinking person would conclude that monitoring school toilets with CCTV cameras is a gross invasion of privacy. The risks of this footage falling into the wrong hands is too horrifying to think about. There is already more CCTV in schools in the UK than anywhere else in the world. CCTV should be used sparingly to help solve serious crimes, not to watch schoolchildren going about their day."

The council said any footage would not be monitored and only viewed when the school wished to address an incident of vandalism or bullying. The footage would also only have been retained for a short period of time before being destroyed.

A spokesman added that the new policy restricting cameras to monitoring the doors of toilets was intended to support schools who "might want to address vandalism or bullying".