Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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491. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to set out the number of complaints received by her Department for each of the past five years; and the number of these complaints that fall within the remit of the Ombudsman for Children to investigate. [10428/15]

Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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492. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to set out the number of complaints investigated by her Department for each of the past five years. [10429/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 491 and 492 together.

Under the Education Act 1998, legally, all schools are managed by the school Board of Management, on behalf of the school patrons or trustees or Education and Training Board (known as the management authority). It is the management authority that employs the school's teachers and other staff members. In ETB schools, the ETB is the employer. The school principal manages the school on a day to day basis.

As my Department has no role in the employment of staff in schools or schools' day to day management, a complaint about the child's school and its staff is proper to the school itself.

Accordingly, whereas my Department provides funding and policy direction for schools, my Department does not have the power to instruct schools to follow a particular course of action with regard to individual complaint cases. In dealing with complaints, the Department's role is to provide advice to parents and students on the operation of schools' complaints procedures and to clarify for parents and pupils how grievances and complaints against schools can be progressed.

Complaints from parents are often received by phone, and across all sections of the Department. These are attended to contemporaneously in detail by telephone and are not logged. It is therefore not possible to provide data in any accurate format as to how many such complaints have been received in the Department.

The statutory role and functions of the Children's Ombudsman are set out under sections 8 and 9 of the Ombudsman for Children Act, 2002. The Act empowers the Children's Ombudsman to investigate the administrative procedures followed by a school board of management provided the parent has firstly and fully followed the schools complaints procedures. The key criterion for any intervention by the Ombudsman is that a child has, or may have been negatively affected by the action of a school.

Queries as to the volume of complaints which have been received by the Ombudsman for Children should be directed to that office, which is contactable at oco@oco.ie or 1800 20 20 40.

The Deputy may be aware that I plan to provide in law for a Parent and Student Charter. Providing parents with the rationale for any decision is important. If schools help parents to understand the basis for a decision parents are more likely to accept the fairness of decisions.

This charter may be underpinned by legislation if necessary. I believe there is a need to look at how a stronger culture of valuing parental involvement at the level of each individual school can be created.