June 2008
A nursery school is using fingerprint scanning to check the identity of parents dropping off and picking up children.
Springfield Lodge Day Nursery, which has sites in Powder Mill Lane in Dartford and Craylands Lane in Swanscombe, introduced scanning today (June 2).
Parents and staff must have their fingerprint scanned to open an access door to the nursery.
Owner of the nursery Linda Berryman said: "The idea of having the system put in was to increase the security of the children and to allow quicker access to the nursery for parents."
For the past three weeks the nursery has been collecting fingerprints of parents and staff.
Ms Berryman said most parents were happy about the introduction of the system.
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advertisementThe two sites have a total of 279 children from babies to to 11-years-old.
However, charity Kidscape, which aims to protect children from harm, described the measure as "paranoid and overkill".
Director Michelle Elliot said: "We don't want to give children the idea that the world is so dangerous that they can't even go to nursery school without being scanned."
Nursery owner Ms Berryman stressed that only parents and staff were scanned and not children.