Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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364. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his plans to allow schools to retain details of school attendance electronically. [32112/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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My Department is currently streamlining the arrangements for the maintenance of school attendance records at primary level and will be publishing a circular in this regard in the coming days.

Preparatory work has also been commenced by my Department on the development of a primary online pupil database. My Department envisages starting a consultation process with the management bodies and relevant education partners in relation to this work in early Autumn 2013.

As the nature and scope of the primary pupil database project develops, further consideration will be given by my Department as to how electronic records systems at school level could in the future fit with the database. In this regard, my Department will also engage further with the relevant partners in relation to the minimum requirements relating to areas such as data integrity, audit trails, data protection, oversight and other core system requirements which will need to be met by any such electronic systems.

The information requested by the Deputy is set out in Tables 1 and 2 below.

TABLE 1

TABLE 2

Details of results of section 29 appeals from 2008 to 2012

* Pre a Supreme Court Judgment this was an option open to committee members, post the judgment it was no longer an option.