Scottish school children get ID numbers

Online registration made possible

The Scottish Executive is to give schoolchildren identity numbers as part of a new protection strategy.

Known as the Scottish Candidate Number (SCN), the identifications will be held in a central database run by the Scottish Qualifications Authority and will allow school registers to be taken and checked online across the whole of Scotland.

The system will allow parents to be contacted by mobile text message if their children do not arrive for school on time.

The scheme is also intended to aid the work of the Executive's Children Missing Education project, launched last year to help find children who have disappeared from the Scottish education system.