Worked example · English · Year 9
DCF: Citizenship → Digital rights, licensing and ownership
A secure Year 9 response, annotated so you can see which success criterion each part meets. Show it after pupils have planned, not before — otherwise you get 30 copies of it.
Every time we install an app we are asked to agree to something almost nobody reads. Companies call that a fair trade: our data for their free service. I am going to argue the opposite — that personal data should stay personal, because the choice we are offered is not a real choice and the risks land on us, not on the company.
States the side in the first paragraph and previews both points.
Firstly, consent that is this hard to refuse is not consent at all. The stimulus sheet points out that a Terms of Service agreement runs to thousands of words, and that "reject" is often buried two menus below "accept". If you do refuse, you frequently lose the service completely — which is no use when your class group chat, your bus timetable and your homework all live inside it. Agreeing because there is no workable alternative is not the same as agreeing freely.
Point 1 with evidence quoted from the stimulus, then explained rather than left to speak for itself.
Secondly, data that is collected will eventually leak, and the damage falls on the user. Companies are breached regularly, and once an address, a date of birth or a password has been copied out it cannot be un-copied. A firm can be fined by the Information Commissioner's Office and carry on trading; the person whose identity is used to open an account cannot simply issue themselves a new date of birth. Under UK GDPR I can ask for my data to be erased, but that right only helps if the company still controls every copy — after a breach it does not.
Point 2 with evidence, and it names a real regulator and a real right, meeting the third criterion.
The strongest argument on the other side is that collection genuinely improves things: a map that knows the roads are blocked can route me around the jam, and fraud teams spot a stolen card because the spending stops looking like mine. That is true, but both examples work on data about the journey or the transaction, not on a permanent profile of everything I have ever searched for. The useful part does not require the invasive part.
Answers the other side instead of ignoring it, and concedes the fair bit before narrowing it.
To conclude, the case for keeping personal data personal is stronger. The agreement we are asked to give is not freely given, the consequences of a leak are carried by the user rather than the company, and the genuine benefits can be delivered without storing a lifetime profile of every person who uses a phone.
Conclusion restates the case and adds no new evidence.