HUMAN rights campaigners have reacted angrily to news that 11 of a city's schools are fingerprinting pupils.

Seven primary and four secondary schools in York are using biometric data to identify pupils taking out library books.

The figures emerged after MEP Godfrey Bloom submitted a Freedom of Information request for the details.

He said: "Personally, I find it very disturbing. We cannot seem to get to the bottom of why you need children's fingerprints. We used to have little cardboard cards, and it worked extremely well."

Human rights group Privacy International said the practice was happening in many schools throughout Britain.

Gus Hosein, a senior fellow at Privacy International, said: "This is the only country in the world that has done this. In every other country in the world, the idea of fingerprinting people is opposed, and the idea of fingerprinting children is abhorrent."

The schools are: Archbishop Holgate CE, Huntington Secondary, Joseph Rowntree Secondary, Manor CE, Archbishop of York's Junior, Clifton Green Primary, Knavesmire Primary, St Lawrence's CE Primary, St Wilfrid's RC Primary, Stockton-on-the-Forest Primary and Yearsley Grove Primary.

Clifton Green stopped using the system after Mr Bloom raised concerns over civil liberties.

The schools said the technology was safe, pupils enjoyed using it, and parents had only rarely complained.

A spokesman for North Yorkshire County Council said the authority was only aware of two schools using fingerprint technology. They are Ryedale School, in Nawton, near Helmsley, and King James School, Knaresborough.

A spokesman for Durham County Council said the authority was not aware of any schools that use the technology, but said it was an initiative that individual schools would introduce and would have no reason to inform the council.

Middlesbrough Council said no schools maintained by the local education authority collected fingerprints from pupils.