Schools get €800k grant for sharing pupil data

Primary schools have been paid a grant of more than €800,000 for filling detailed forms to help monitor pupils’ progress through the education system.

The planned sharing by the Department of Education of personal information from the Primary Online Database with other agencies has drawn criticism about data protection issues.

The database is being introduced for the first time this year, mirroring a similar database that has operated in second-level schools since 1991.

The one-off payment was made to all primary schools days before Christmas for the extra work in collecting individual information for each pupil in the first year of operation.

The grant is worth €1.50 per child — or almost €200 for the average 130-pupil school. However, for around 700 schools with 60 pupils or fewer, a flat payment or €90 was made, regardless of enrolment size.

“The department acknowledges that the move to POD is challenging and an additional body of work for schools in the short term,” a spokesperson said.

It said the grant was paid out of last year’s budget to school boards to assist with the initial population of the database, and it amounted to around €830,000.

“It is at schools’ discretion how best to use the POD implementation grant,” the department said.

The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation said the funding is intended to assist with providing clerical support related to the data collection phase of the project. It had sought the extra funding, having said collecting such data was not the work of a principal or teacher.

The union supports the need to gather the information to help inform policy and reduce requests from other public bodies to schools, but has also expressed concern about the need to address the increasing workload of principals.

Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan said yesterday that she is willing to look at the length of time that pupils’ information is to be held, as concerns had been expressed about plans to keep data until the person reaches the age of 30.

“We want to ensure that we have the necessary information in terms of planning, but that is an area of it I would be happy to examine,” she told Newstalk’s Lunchtime programme.

Sinn Féin education spokesman Jonathan O’Brien said this week that concerns about the necessity of collecting students’ PPS numbers and holding them until they are 30 were completely reasonable.

As well as enabling the tracking of children’s educational progress, the department plans to share personal data with State bodies such as child and family agency Tusla, the Department of Social Protection and CSO.

The database’s extension to primary level has been sought for many years by teacher and school organisations, but also by the Economic and Social Research Institute.

It says it should fill major gaps in information on questions like numbers of pupil who do not transfer to second-level every year and also the progress of children with special needs in the education system.