Facial Recognition is coming to St Peter’s Catholic High School!
We’re excited to announce that Facial Recognition will soon arrive at St Peter’s to offer a fast and straightforward payment experience for school meals.
It's essential to us that everyone in our school community, including parents, guardians, and pupils, is well-informed about this new development and has all the necessary information before opting to use this new service.
This page provides detailed information about Facial Recognition, including how it works, how we will utilise the software, and, most importantly, the benefits for pupils.
Why St Peter’s is introducing Facial Recognition
Facial Recognition offers a quick and secure way for students to purchase school meal items without needing cash and the risk of losing cards or forgetting passwords. With Facial Recognition, pupils simply select their meal, look at the camera and go, speeding up the lunchtime service with a contactless point-of-sale experience.
This technology will be used as an additional authentication method at the checkout counters, providing faster service for pupils. Our goal is to help pupils reclaim time to enjoy their meal breaks and nutritious meals, making it easier for them to attend lunch clubs.
How the technology works
With Facial Recognition technology, pupils simply choose their meal, look at the checkout camera, and proceed with a quick and secure point-of-sale experience.
Facial Recognition is a biometric recognition method that works in the same way as other recognition technologies. Like a PIN, a unique identifier is attributed to each pupil and matched at the till for quick and secure access to their cashless account.
An image of the face is captured, and the software turns unique features of the face geometry, such as the distance between the eyes and the distance from the top of the forehead to the chin, to create a unique identifier for each pupil.
When pupils pay for their meal items at the point of sale, the camera matches their unique identifier to their cashless account to take payment.
How the transaction process works
- Consent
Parents must opt in for their child to use Facial Recognition before an image is taken. If consent isn’t given to use the software, the till operator cannot activate the Facial Recognition process. - Capture
The biometric system captures an image of the pupil’s face. This image is not retained, stored, or distributed to third parties, and Facial Recognition cameras are only located at the point of sale for school meal transactions. - Collection
The system reads distinctive features from the image and processes them through an algorithm. This process turns the image into a unique string of characters, which serves as the pupil’s unique identifier. This unique identifier is stored on a secure, encrypted database within the school and is used to verify pupils’ accounts at the checkout. - Identification
During checkout, the cashier initiates the system to verify their account and process the transaction. The cashier must activate this process; the system is not live for pupils. A picture of the pupil is captured and processed through the algorithm to confirm their unique identifier and access their account. The image is not kept on record; only its unique identifier is stored.
Security of Facial Recognition
Biometrics, in this case, provides a unique identifier for the person present at the checkout. The unique identifier is created by processing the biometric capture through a mathematical algorithm, generating a unique number. Only this number is stored; the captured image is not retained. This data is encrypted using AES 256 (similar to encryption used by your online banking) and cannot be reversed to produce an image of the biometric, ensuring the highest level of security and compliance.
Consent Request
To proceed with the facial recognition registration process, we require consent from all parents for their child(ren). Please make sure you have read the information above, and also the FAQs below, then complete the consent form as soon as possible: