What is APAAR ID?

The activists and parents are raising alarms over the aggressive push by schools to generate APAAR IDs for students, a part of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 record-keeping reforms. Despite its voluntary status, states and school authorities are pressuring enrollment, sparking debates over privacy, legality, and administrative burden. This issue gained traction after Uttar Pradesh threatened to de-recognize madrasas for non-compliance and amid ongoing data security concerns highlighted by groups like the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF).

What is APAAR ID?

• Definition: APAAR stands for Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry, a system enabling the ‘One Nation, One Student ID’ initiative.
• Purpose: It aims to accumulate and store students’ academic records, facilitating seamless transitions between institutions and rapid verification of transcripts.
• Key Features: Linked to Aadhaar and stored in DigiLocker, it provides standardized data on marksheets and affiliations via the UDISE+ portal, a database for regional academic statistics.
• NEP 2020 Role: A cornerstone of NEP’s mandate to overhaul education data collection for policymaking.

Is APAAR Mandatory?

• Official Stance: Not mandatory, per a document on APAAR’s official site and a December 2024 Parliament response from the Union government.
• Reality on Ground: CBSE and states like Uttar Pradesh push for 100% saturation, creating expectations that all students enroll, with no clear opt-out communication to parents.
• Pressure Tactics: Circulars and FAQs emphasize benefits—like storing data for transfers, exams, admissions, and jobs—but obscure its voluntary nature.

Data Security Concerns:

• Lack of Transparency: The IFF’s RTI application on APAAR’s policy documents was transferred over 30 times by the Union government, yielding no clarity on its legal basis.
• Broad Data Collection: Not limited to grades, APAAR collects extensive data, raising fears of misuse, especially as it involves minors’ data without a backing law, deemed unconstitutional by IFF.
• DPDPA 2023 Violation: Section 9(3) of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 prohibits tracking or targeting children, yet APAAR’s open APIs lack robust safeguards, risking third-party exploitation.
• Teacher Critique: Data overlaps with UDISE+, duplicating administrative work unnecessarily.

How is APAAR ID Generated?

• Process: Teachers and schools lead, verifying students’ name and date of birth, followed by parents filling a consent form. Post-authentication, the ID is generated.
• Challenges: Name mismatches between school records and IDs require correction and resubmission, complicating the process.

Can Parents Opt Out?

• Yes, but Difficult: Parents can opt out by writing to schools, with a template from the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) available online.
• Increasing Pressure: Uttar Pradesh’s warnings of enrollment mismatches and threats to madrasas signal growing coercion, despite successes where parents used paperwork to resist.

Broader Implications:

• Activists’ View: The push reflects a “voluntary-mandatory” pattern, akin to Aadhaar, risking privacy breaches without the DPDPA 2023 fully in effect.
• Educational Impact: Teachers argue it shifts focus from teaching to redundant admin tasks, while parents fear data exposure in a system lacking cybersecurity guarantees.