The Privacy Committee of South Australia has accused the state's education department of breaching the privacy of students by disclosing "identified personal information" to the Commonwealth Government as part of the national program to measure the development of children.
In its recent annual report, the Committee said its concerns related to the "disclosure related to the adequacy of the process for parental consent for the collection of a child’s information as part of the AEDI (Australian Early Development Index)".
It said the Department for Education and Child Development (DECD) had failed to obtain adequate informed consent from parents to provide data that identified individuals.
"The letter DECD provided to parents to inform them of the collection provided an option to opt-out of the collection. The Committee did not consider this process gave parents adequate opportunity to provide informed consent,'' it said.
"The Committee was also concerned that parents were not provided sufficient information about the future storage and use of the information collected by the Commonwealth."
The department, however, says there was no privacy breach.
A spokesman for the DECD, according to the News Corp media, said an approved opt-out consent had been used.
"This protocol has been approved by accredited and independent ethics committees," the spokeswoman said.
"The Australian Government Department of Education routinely reviews the privacy protocols of the AEDI and has found that the 2012 AEDI has been conducted in accordance with the Commonwealth Privacy Act."