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Journalism of Courage
Last week, several state governments requested schools to seek parental consent for the creation of a new student identity card known as the Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (APAAR). This is part of the ‘One nation, One Student ID’ initiative of the Union government, stemming from the new National Education Policy of 2020.
What is APAAR and what are its implications for students and institutions of learning? We explain.
APAAR, which stands for Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry, is envisioned as a special ID system for all students in India, starting from childhood. Under the initiative, each student would get a lifelong APAAR ID, making it easy for the learners, schools, and governments to track academic progress from pre-primary education to higher education.
APAAR would also serve as a gateway to Digilocker, a digital system where students can store their important documents and achievements, such as exam results and report cards, digitally, making it easier to access and use them in the future for, say, pursuing higher education or finding a job.
But why introduce it?
The goal behind introducing APAAR is to make education hassle-free and reduce the need for students to carry physical documents. This initiative was launched as part of the National Education Policy 2020 by the Education Ministry.
“The vision is to create a positive change, allowing state governments to track literacy rates, dropout rates, and more, helping them make improvements,” Anil Sahasrabuddhe, Chairman of the National Educational Technology Forum, explained, “It’s about giving states the tools to enhance their performance.”
APAAR also aims to reduce fraud and duplicate educational certificates by providing a single, trusted reference for educational institutions. Only first party sources that issue certificates will be allowed to deposit credits into the system, ensuring authenticity.
Every individual will have a unique APAAR ID, which will be linked to the Academic Bank Credit (ABC), which is a digital storehouse that contains information of the credits earned by students throughout their learning journey. With the APAAR ID, students would be able to store all their certificates and credits, whether they come from formal education or informal learning. When a student completes a course or achieves something, it’s digitally certified and securely stored in her account by authorised institutions.
If the student changes schools, whether within the state or to another state, all her data in the ABC gets transferred to her new school just by sharing the APAAR ID. She won’t need to provide physical documents or transfer certificates.
To sign up for APAAR, students will have to provide basic information such as name, age, date of birth, gender, and a photograph. This information will be verified using their Aadhar number.
“It’s important to know that the Aadhar number is only used for verification to match the name and date of birth. APAAR won’t use or share these details with anyone else during registration,” said Sahasrabuddhe. Students will need to sign a consent form, and they can choose to either accept or decline sharing their Aadhar number and demographic information with the Ministry of Education for creating the APAAR ID.
For minors, parents will have to sign the consent form, allowing the Ministry to use the student’s Aadhar number for authentication with UIDAI. Registration for creating APAAR ID is voluntary, not mandatory.
Parents and students have concerns about sharing their Aadhar details because they worry that their personal information could be leaked to outside parties.
The government, however, says that the information shared by students will be kept confidential and will not be shared with any third party except for entities engaged in educational activities, such as the Unified District Information System for Education Plus or the UDISE+ database (the government’s catalogue that contains data related to schools, teachers and students), scholarships, maintenance academic records, educational institutions and recruitment agencies.
At any given time, students have the option to stop sharing their information with the mentioned parties, and their data processing will be halted. However, any personal data already processed will remain unaffected if consent is withdrawn.
