John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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209. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of Chinese nationals who attended schools here; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19537/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The definitive source of statistics on pupils in primary schools for the 2015/2016 academic year is the National School Annual Census. The data shows that of the 553,380 pupils enrolled in 2015/2016, 8,580 defined their nationality as being from a country in Asia. The Primary Online Database (POD) will replace the National School Annual Census as the definitive source of statistics from the 2016/2017 academic year onwards.

At post-primary level there were 345,550 pupils enrolled in second level programmes in the 2015/2016 academic year. Of these 342 pupils indicated that their country of birth was China in the 2015/2016 academic year.