The Department for Education (DfE) is preparing to test the use of NHS numbers in school management systems, as part of government plans for a single unique identifier for every child in England.

Ministers want to trial the integration of NHS numbers into school management information systems (MIS), the software schools use to hold pupil records. The DfE is seeking MIS providers to take part in the next phase of testing, which would link their systems to a DfE-hosted service that gives authorised users access to NHS numbers.

An NHS number is a unique 10-digit number assigned at birth or when a person first registers with a GP. It is used to identify patients and to transfer medical records, and most people keep the same number for life.

The plan is part of a wider move towards a single unique identifier, known as an SUI, for children. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 allows the government to introduce the identifier so that professionals in schools, social care and the police can share information about children more easily. The number would be introduced through secondary legislation by the end of this Parliament in 2029.

The DfE has described the existing NHS number as a likely option for the identifier since December 2024. It piloted the use of the NHS number with Wigan council in April 2025, and further pilots have since been introduced across councils.

Skills minister Jacqui Smith told the House of Lords in January that the government would mandate the identifier only when it was confident in the benefits, costs, security and governance, and that it must deliver the intended outcomes. She said the Wigan pilot had been resource intensive and had taken almost nine months to work through information governance activity, and no evaluation of it has been published.

The department says the identifier is intended to improve safeguarding. In a written parliamentary answer, it said schools currently use identifiers such as the unique pupil number, but those are not recognised across other agencies that process information about children’s safeguarding and welfare, creating fragmentation and risk. The intention, it said, is not to replace the identifiers already used in education, but to design the new identifier so it works alongside them.

Data privacy experts have raised concerns about the plan. Sam Smith, coordinator at medical privacy rights group medConfidential, said that because NHS numbers are for life, schools and MIS services would have to meet NHS cybersecurity standards for retaining them. He warned that if a school lost the identifier, there was little mechanism for the NHS number to be replaced, and that the costs of getting it wrong would fall on the NHS.

Jen Persson, director of Defend Digital Me, said there were many technical and practical risks, including that using the NHS number in schools would expand the data held on every child, or risk revealing a new home address in cases of domestic violence or details of adoption that are highly confidential.

Those concerns come as schools report high levels of cyber incidents. According to government figures, more than seven in 10 secondary schools, 73 per cent, and nearly half of primary schools, 49 per cent, reported experiencing a cyber breach or attack in 2025-26.

Supporters of the identifier say better information sharing is overdue. Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner, has long called for a single unique identifier, describing it as not a silver bullet but a vital first step towards better information sharing across the services children rely on. She added that if the NHS number were used, extra consideration must be given to children who receive a new NHS number at any point in their childhood.

A children’s rights impact assessment of the bill in June said the risks to privacy were offset by the broader benefits to children brought by the identifier. Once introduced, a code of practice will set out technical and practical matters on accessing, storing and using the identifier.

The DfE has not yet said which MIS providers or schools will take part in the next test, or when it will begin. For now, the work remains a trial, and the decision on whether the NHS number becomes the single identifier for children has not yet been taken.