Currently, the Spanish public education system relies heavily on digital educational platforms of technology corporations, in a global context of digitization of education accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. This process is characterised both globally and locally by the monopolisation and outsourcing of the provision of educational technologies and by a great lack of knowledge about the consequences of their use for schoolchildren. In this context, despite their potential reluctance, families are forced to authorise the use of corporate digital platforms in the school (Livingstone & Blum-Ross, 2020) to prevent their children from being excluded from access to a resource increasingly used in schools and, therefore, from the very right to education.

In legal terms, advances are identified such as the right to personal data protection in the European legislation and the imposition of sanctions for breaches of the General Data Protection Regulation in the EU are identified (Voigt & Von dem Bussche, 2017). However, despite the obligation of governments to protect their population from potential abuses regarding the improper use of personal data, Amnesty International claims that private suppliers of digital services have been left to be "virtually self-regulated" (2019). In addition, the European Court of Justice declared the transatlantic Privacy Shield agreement invalid, finding that there is no guarantee that data leakage and commercialization between the EU and the United States can be prevented.

In this global scenario, the data of the educational community become the commodity of exchange for the corporations that provide digital services to the education systems. UNICEF demonstrates that children are more susceptible to digital marketing techniques, more likely to become consumers and dependent users of these technologies, and therefore, more manipulable (Williamson, 2017; Cobo & Rivera-Vargas, 2022). Hence, children are much more vulnerable to "surveillance capitalism" (Zuboff, 2019) because they are more exposed to the violation of rights of privacy, protection and personal information and reputation. This is in addition to the reproduction of gender inequalities and the intersectionalities of apps associated with these corporations that, for example, make girls and boys who use them receive advertising or see sexist and racist roles reproduced in their search engines.

It also affects their right to education, as the public system is commodified and the public administration loses control of the pedagogical methodology and educational content on these digital platforms. Evidence shows that this dependence on transnationals is undermining pedagogical and digital sovereignty at the global level, allowing these corporations to develop their commercial objectives in an educational and public space, imposing their ideologies, for example through the increased use of social networks linked to "gamification" in education, where technology holdings link their other platforms and digital resources (Sancho-Gil, Rivera-Vargas & Miño-Puigcercós, 2020).

In this context, the project "Digital platforms and datification in primary education in Spain: child protection in a context of educational digitalization" arises (MICIN, PID2022-137033NA-I00), whose main objective is to explore and analyse the socio-educational effects of the use of digital platforms and data storage and management on child protection in primary education in Spain. From there, it is expected to provide evidence that will contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge and social debate around the platformisation and datification of primary education.

Digiproted is organised into four phases. This paper will present the preliminary results of the first of them, where normative and political texts related to the protection of children in digital contexts at international, European, national, and regional levels are being analysed. 

The project’s research work includes designing and developing a mixed methodology. In this first phase, on the one hand, a documentary analysis is being carried out, linked to the review of legal and political documents referring to the protection of children in digital contexts at different levels. On the other hand, 10 semi-structured interviews will be conducted with experts in the field of education and digital technology in education. The selection of these people will be intentional and will seek to capture the positions and visions of different professionals on the phenomenon of the platforming of education and the processes of digitalisation concerning child protection. It is expected that at least two interviews will be conducted for each profile proposed (academic, policy, activist, business, stakeholder). These interviews will be recorded, transcribed, and analysed using software specialised in textual data analysis (Atlas.ti, University of Barcelona licence). They will make it possible to relate the results of the analysis of the discourses inscribed in the normative and political documents and to know the interpretations made of them from an expert point of view. By means of discourse analysis (Wetherell & Potter, 1998) will seek to relate the main discourses of regulations and public policies present in the documents, and the voices of the experts interviewed. The analysis of all the evidence generated in this phase will inform the development of the subsequent phases.

The results of this first phase are expected to identify the main elements that can enhance the protection of children in the digital society in the Spanish context. At the same time, they will allow the recognition of difficulties in the enactment of the regulatory framework. In general terms, the results of this research are intended to generate an awareness plan for the entire educational community, public administrations with educational competence, universities, and social actors at national and international levels on the consequences of the use of digital educational platforms of technological corporations and their impact on the protection of children rights. In this way, it aims to create critical local and global awareness about the potential consequences of the promotion of digital educational environments controlled by technological corporations and to promote critical citizenship committed to children's human rights to build a fairer society also in the field of educational digitalization.

Amnesty International. (2019). Surveillance giants: How the business model of Google and Facebook threatens human rights. Amnesty International. Retrieved from: https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/POL3014042019ENGLISH.pdf Cobo-Romani, C., & Rivera-Vargas, P. (2022). Turn off your camera and turn on your privacy: A case study about Zoom and digital education in South American countries. In L. Pangrazio & J. Sefton-green. Learning to Live with Datafication Educational Case Studies and Initiatives from Across the World. (In press). Routledge. Livingstone, S., & Blum-Ross, A. (2020). Parenting for a digital future: How hopes and fears about technology shape children's lives. Oxford University Press, USA. Sancho-Gil, J. M., Rivera-Vargas, P., & Miño-Puigcercós, R. (2020). Moving beyond the predictable failure of Ed-Tech initiatives. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(1), 61-75. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2019.1666873 Selwyn, N. (2016). Is technology good for education? John Wiley & Sons. Voigt, P., & Von dem Bussche, A. (2017). The EU general data protection regulation (gdpr). A Practical Guide, 1st Ed., Cham: Springer International Publishing, 10, 3152676. Williamson, B. (2017) Big Data in Education: The Digital Future of Learning, Policy and Practice. London: Sage X-Net (2020). Privacidad, Protección de Datos vs Abusos Institucionalizados. X-Net. Retrieved from: https://xnet-x.net/es/datos-por-liebre-xnet-abusos-reforma-ley-proteccion-datos/