Campus Talk: As Maharashtra pushes for APAAR ID, a look at the unique identification system for school students

As parents are trying to know more about APAAR ID, and schools across state are struggling with the Herculean task; here is an explainer on what is APAAR ID, its function and concerns around it.

What is an APAAR ID?

APAAR,which stands for Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (APAAR) identity (ID), is a 12-digit unique identification system for each student under the Central Government’s ‘One Nation, One student ID’ initiative. It will be a lifelong digital identity that will allow students to track their academic progress and achievements as it will function as digital storage for each student for academic records.

What is the function of APAAR ID?

This new digital identification will serve as a digital locker for every student to keep their academic records, important documents and achievement certificates. The APAAR ID also aims to make it easier to track academic records of any student and to reduce fraud and duplicate educational certificates by providing a single, trusted reference for educational institutions.

Last year, in line with academic flexibility recommended under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, Academic Bank of Credit (ABC) was launched for higher education courses to ensure transparent and fair transfer of credits for students.
The ABC, which essentially serves as a digital database to store credits earned by individual students, will be linked with the APAAR ID with an aim to have a single digital storage for all academic records of a student from pre-primary to higher education.

How is APAAR ID generated?

For APAAR ID generation, schools are required to first take consent from parents for each child. Schools are then enabled to create APAAR ID of students (whose parents have given consent) through the dedicated APAAR module tab available on the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) portal. Required details for this process are – student’ name, gender and date of birth along with his/her AADHAR number and parents’ names.

Is it compulsory to generate an APAAR ID?

The prerequisite of parental consent makes it a voluntary digital identity. However, with the government pushing for complete implementation by giving deadlines to schools; concerns are raised by a few, including parents who fear sharing their child’s data including Aadhaar card details with the new system.

According to schools, they are under pressure from the government to complete the APAAR ID generation amid issues such as technical glitches, time-consuming process, mismatching data for example incorrectly spelt names among others; apart from difficulty in obtaining parental consent.