You’ll recall that last week National spent $200,000 of taxpayer dollars on a proganda drop defending its national standards. This was a targeted exercise – 350,000 of the pamphlets were produced, enough for the parents of each primary school pupil.
So, how did they know what addresses to send them to? You can’t get information on who has primary school kids from the electoral roll or any other public list. They may have gained the addresses by profiling people on the electoral roll, but prolfiling is a hit and miss affair. As far as I can see, there’s only one database that gives you the residential addresses of every school pupil – the Ministry of Education’s National Student Index.
The Education Act limits the use of the National Student Index to: “Monitoring and ensuring student enrollment and attendance, ensuring education providers and students receive appropriate resourcing, statistical purposes, research purposes, and ensuring that students’ educational records are accurately maintained”
Did National use the Index, in violation of the law, to get the list of pupils’ addresses? I can’t be sure but it looks bloody suspicious. I think the possibility that private information may have been misused is serious enough for me to raise the question and ask for clarification.
If you know what happened, you can tell us in confidence at thestandardnz[at]gmail[dot]com
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