Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)
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476. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason, when completing the primary online database forms, parents are being asked for their children's PPSN numbers and religion; the repercussions for pupils, parents and schools in circumstances where parents decline to hand over this sensitive information; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [3758/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The Department has developed an individualised electronic database of primary school pupils (POD – the Primary Online Database). The primary purpose of POD will be to monitor the education progress of primary pupils (in DES aided schools), throughout the primary system and onwards to post primary level and to help them develop their full educational potential. Once up and running other secondary purposes of POD will include becoming the basis for the allocation of teachers and capitation grants. Aggregated POD data will also be used for the production and publication of primary level statistics. A PPS number is an individual's unique identification number for all dealings with the Public Service, including Social Welfare, tax, education and health services.

Having the PPSN on the database will help ensure that there are no duplicate records in the system i.e that two schools do not have the same child on their roll. In the future we will be able to track pupils from early childhood education, to primary school and onto post-primary, which will allow us to ensure that every child in the State of compulsory school age is in education. Religion is requested for statistical reasons only and parents have the option not to include the religion of their child on POD. Individualised data coverage has already been in place for a number of years at pre-primary, post-primary and third level education who collect individual information on each pupil, including their PPSN.

The current retention policy for Primary Online Database (POD) data is for records to be maintained for the longer of either the period up to the pupil's 30th Birthday or for a period of ten years since the student was last enrolled in a primary school. In future schools will no longer be required to keep the Clárleabhar therefore POD will be the official register of pupils in schools and data will be retained to allow pupils to obtain their records in the future. The retention policy facilitates the Department's requirement for audit and accounting purposes as pupil's data is used in the allocation of teaching posts and funding to schools. The policy also serves to trace retention trends in the education system, is important for longitudinal research and policy formation, as well as being an important statistical indicator nationally an internationally. Aggregate and not individual data is used for the majority of these purposes. The Department will continue to review its retention policy for pupil data in consultation with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner. The Department proposes in the future to share some of the personal data stored on POD with other State bodies. These are:

- Central Statistics Office, under the Statistics Acts to assist with the compilation of national statistics.

- The National Council for Special Education, under the Education Welfare Act, in order to assist in supporting resource allocation in relation to pupils with special educational needs.

- The Child and Family Agency, under the Education Welfare Act, to ensure that each child of compulsory school age is in receipt of an education.

- The Department of Social Protection to validate pupil identity. The Department will put in place a data user agreement with each of these bodies, which includes the purpose for which the body requires the data, its storage, security and retention.

The information on POD will, from the 2016\2017 academic year onwards, be used to underpin the payment of public funds and allocation of resources to primary schools, as is already the case at pre-primary, post-primary and third level education. If a child's data is not on POD at that time then they may not be counted for grant payment and teacher allocation purposes for the child's school.