APAAR ID for School Students Voluntary, but Parents, Activists Worry About Growing Mandates
Aroon Deep | 12 March 2025 | The Hindu
Parents and activists worry that the Ministry of Education’s Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (APAAR) ID for school students could become near impossible to opt out from, even though the programme is supposed to be voluntary. The APAAR ID ties into DigiLocker and the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC), which the government hopes to use to standardise students’ school transcripts in a uniform way as a “single source of truth”.
However, the APAAR ID system has drawn scrutiny on data privacy and necessity grounds. While the Education Ministry has said in a document on its website that getting an APAAR ID is not mandatory, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) told schools in a circular this January that it expects them “to ensure 100% saturation of APAAR IDs for all students,” a directive that many schools have taken as a mandate….