Minority (school) report

Predictive technology – powered by increasingly complex algorithms – is finding its way into schools, promising to pre-empt misbehaviour, violence or mental health issues before they happen. But does it work, and is its use ethical, asks Simon Creasey

- Simon Creasey

David sits in the office, tapping the arm of the chair and staring through the window at the sports fields and the trees beyond.The head teacher begins. She explains that the advanced behaviour tracking (ABT) system has signalled that he is an immediate threat, so the school has had to call in the police.

David glances at the two young officers sitting in the corner of the room, staring right at him. He looks back to the headteacher. “ABT says there’s an 81 per cent risk that you will commit a violent act in the next three days,” she continues, her hands shaking. “There is a 67 per cent chance that act will be fatal to another student. There is an 87 per cent risk you will also do harm to yourself. This crosses all our pre-approved thresholds for action within the ABT system.” David thinks back to the questions.

He tries to work out which one gave him away. He touches the patch on his arm, and tries to work out what bits of information he unwittingly gave up. He pictures the smart cameras dotted around the school, and wonders what they saw and heard.

He looks at his mum and pushes his bag further under the headteacher’s desk with his foot. He tries to work out whether they know already that inside the bag is a knife and that today he intended to use it.

This scenario probably seems unlikely to you. Pre-crime detection is the stuff of science fiction and even if the technology did exist to track behaviour and make predictions, the ethical and privacy concerns of such technology would surely mean it would never find its way into schools.