SWINDON Council has confirmed that the personal details of 46,000 children are on a schools database put together by contractor Capita.

The information includes school attended, age and address of the child, educational attainment, attendance and exclusion records, entitlement to free school meals and transport and other support services.

A total of 68 schools in Swindon automatically add information to the database via their own systems.

A spokesman for the council said information can only go one way, from the school to the database and there have been no breaches of the data policy to date.

Contrary to a report in the Sunday Times, he said no outside agencies could access the database.