Why in news?

• Recently, several state governments requested schools to seek parental consent for the creation of a new student identity card.
• The new ID card, known as the Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry- APAAR, is part of the ‘One nation, One Student ID’ initiative of the Union government.

What’s in today’s article?

• APAAR ID

What is APPAR ID?

• It 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.
  • 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.

Need

• 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 helping them make improvements.
• 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.

Working of APAAR ID

• Every individual will have a unique APAAR ID, which will be linked to the Academic Bank Credit (ABC).
  • ABC 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 is digitally certified and securely stored in his/her account by authorised institutions.
• If the student changes schools, whether within the state or to another state, all related data in the ABC gets transferred to the new school just by sharing the APAAR ID.

What do students have to do to get their single ID created?

• 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.
• 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.

Concerns surrounding APAAR

• Sharing of Aadhar details and issue around security
  • Parents and students 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.
  • These entities include the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) database, scholarships, maintenance academic records, educational institutions and recruitment agencies.
    • UDISE+ database is the government’s catalogue that contains data related to schools, teachers and students.
• Processing of information
• 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.
• Burden on teaching faculties
  • School authorities have raised the issue of already pending Aadhaar verification of students, which is kept optional.
  • The addition of the APAAR registry can increase the administrative burden on the teaching faculty.