Facial recognition makes its way to United Kingdom schools as a lunch payment tech, which seeks to minimize touch amid the COVID-19 pandemic and also speed up the process.
CHERTSEY, UNITED KINGDOM - MARCH 09: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) Pupils collect lunch in the canteen on their first day back from lockdown at Chertsey High School on March 09, 2021 in Chertsey, United Kingdom. Chertsey High school, which is part of the Bourne Education Trust, is continuing to conduct lateral flow testing within the school every 3 to five days until all children who have consented have completed three tests, before being asked to complete the tests at home. England's schools re-opened to pupils from March 8th, 2021 after closing for a third lockdown on January 5th, 2021.
Facial Recognition Coming to UK Schools
As per Financial Times, a total of nine schools in the UK's North Ayrshire will be piloting the new payment method in their canteens.
Thus, the latest mode of payment in these school canteens will only need to scan the faces of their students as kids grab their lunch from the cafeteria.
The council of North Ayrshire revealed that 97 percent of both parents and children provided their consent for the facial recognition system.
What's more, the council further added that the classical PIN method ends up being forgotten by the students. Not just that, it also noted that numerical PINs are also susceptible to fraud.
Thus, claiming that there is a need to implement the facial recognition tech to pay for lunch.
Facial Recognition and Lunch Payment
UK schools' facial recognition payment system is touted to be safer for COVID-19 infections as it minimizes touching, unlike the previous fingerprint scanning method, wherein it is required.
On top of that, the installer of the facial recognition tech in multiple UK schools assures that the payment process will be faster than ever.
The managing director of CRB Cunninghams, the firm behind the said tech, David Swanston, said that facial recognition is "faster than card, it's faster than fingerprint."
Swanston further noted that there is so little time to serve the lunch of about a thousand students. Thus, speeding up the system goes a long way for them.
To be precise, the managing director said that secondary schools in the region only have an average of 25 minutes to serve these students with their sumptuous meals in between their classes.
Read Also: Australian Government Tests Facial Recognition Application to Implement During Quarantine Measures
Facial Recognition and Privacy
As such, this is not the first attempt to speed up the process. Financial Times said in the same report that some schools in the British nation have already included biometric systems as part of their payment process like fingerprint scanners.
However, it is worth noting that some critics are alarmed with the use of facial recognition tech in schools and other venues, raising privacy concerns.
According to Yahoo's report, Swanston claimed that the cameras that their firm is using are unlike the live facial recognition system that scans various faces in the crowd.
It is to note that the live facial recognition tech has been in hot water in New York state schools, and was banned last Dec. 30, 2020, due to privacy concerns, EdWeek reported.
Related Article: White House 'Bill of Rights' to Protect Citizens Against AI Technology | Public Comments from AI Developers, Experts, and Affected Needed
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Teejay Boris
