Pupils’ data will be discarded at 19, says minister

Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan is changing plans to hold pupils’ personal data until their 30th birthday and will delete the information when they turn 19 instead.

A revision to the system, under which data for all 540,000 primary pupils is being sent by schools to the department, would see names, full addresses, and PPS numbers deleted or made anonymous more than a decade earlier than previously proposed.

However, only the parents of pupils already in primary school will have an option to have a child’s personal information withheld from the primary online database (POD) without affecting the school’s public funding or staffing levels.