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A PARENTS ASSOCIATION for primary school children hopes that fears over a controversial database of information on pupils doesn’t overshadow ‘the important service’ it will provide.
The Department of Education has started rolling out the Primary Online Database (POD), but has faced criticism over data protection and data retention issues.
POD will track a range of details on individual children, and store the information until the children turn 30.
The National Parents Council – Primary has been fielding a range of concerns from parents on the scheme.
Chief executive Áine Lynch told TheJournal.ie that the main concerns facing parents are the long period of data retention, and as well as the sensitive ethnic information that will be stored.
The Irish Times reported this week that ‘White Irish’ was one option in this category. The Department said this would be reviewed.
“We’re in ongoing discussions with the Department,” Lynch said, “There has been nothing that they haven’t engaged with us on”.
“No one is turning around saying ‘It is what it is’. They’re very much looking at parents’ concerns.”
One concerned parent, solicitor Simon McGarr, has started a petition calling on the Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan to scrap POD completely.
The main concern he has outlined is security, claiming that ‘the Department cannot guarantee who will be able to access it’.
He has also noted that funding may be withheld for children whose parents refuse to have their data entered in the scheme.
However, parental permission is not required for some data.
Simon McGarr / TwitterEven if you explicitly refuse to allow your child's data to be added, the Dept is telling schools to enter it anyway pic.twitter.com/89RBgkNl80
— Simon McGarr @Tupp_ed@mastodon.ie (@Tupp_Ed) January 24, 2015
McGarr has also noted some recent parliamentary questions as cause for concern.
“The data is transmitted securely from POD to the local systems using HTTPS,” Minister O’Sullivan said in response to a question from independent TD Stephen Donnelly,
It is the responsibility of Primary Schools as Data Controllers to ensure that data held on their local systems is held securely.
Lynch said that although POD is currently bogged down with concerns – and it is vital that they are addressed – the online database “for us, is a good news story, and still is.”
“We’ve been calling for it for years. It’s important that glitches and difficulties don’t take over”.
It has always been said that we know more about the cows in the field than the children in our school.
“Once this important information is gathered, it means that supports can be put in place for children as soon as issues arise. It will also be useful for early identification of where children are slipping out of the system”.
More: Department’s plan to collect data on every child a ‘worrying overreach of the State’ >
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A child is a child is a child, we really don’t need to know the colour of their skin or which sky megalomaniac their parents signed them up to know do we.
We don’t need to know unless we’re interested in how it affects their outcomes in Education, quality of life, happiness, employment opportunities etc etc. Studies like ‘Growing up in Ireland’ etc are making quite surprising findings. Currently we have little idea of the consequences of the way we deliver education have on eventual outcomes. Hence you end up in constant circular arguments.
This data can be collected by university studies by polling and interviewing people who voluntarily provide their personal data.
It should not be forced on us by threat of withdrawal of education.
Information we collect in that method is partial and selected. We know from studies the data collected in that fashion is hopelessly skewed.
What study shows that? Could that study be skewed?
Why do we not then shut down research in 50,000 universities worldwide as they are, in your opinion, wasting their time?
It’s a pretty well known phenomenon in academic research. As a result ethics committees tend to permit collection on demographic data on whole populations and most academic papers state what proportion of a population was studied and how many declined. its difficult when you want to collect data to plan a service from, hence you don’t have an option but to have your data collected for the census.
This should be a simple opt out system. You shouldn’t be allowed to gather data on unwilling participants. Particularly those who are worried about what it is used for and how securing it is stored. Or will it be left on a train on a laptop like some many others…
I fail to see why anyone would have an issue with keeping, storage and usage of this data. If the data is kept permanently the I believe it could become a useful tool for future generations just like old school and church records are for the present generations.
If you fail to see why anyone would have an issue with the collection and storage of information on minors then maybe you might research information and data security issues. That should at least give you pause for thought.
@proinsias. I thought something similar. The data are on the census forms, schools, I’m sure, keep enrolment and attendance records so why do we need this? If they want to carry out a large scale, longitudinal study into the impact of class, ethnicity, race, sex etc on educational achievements, then who is running the study? If it is a university dept, they’ll need ethical approval from the university and approval from all those involved. People would also have the right to opt out at any stage. The state doesn’t need to collect this info again as they have it already through the census and school records. Why the duplication? Why has the government been quiet about it? I also noticed the government’s favourite word ‘glitches’ in the article. No doubt Leo, the minister for apologies will have a bit more work on his hands soon.
The readon why there is so much opposition to this is that people do not trust this muppet government.Numerous lies told dince they came into power does not make for trust in this lot.
Here is the reply I got from the Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law
Department of the European Social Charter about a government Momentum program here that was in 2013 and 2014 getting those on the dole to work 12 weeks at 37.5 hours a week in order to get only their dole, nothing extra and organised by the Department of Social Protection…
“I acknowledge receipt of your email addressed to Mr Holtgen, spokesperson for the Secretary General and the Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe, dated 23 January 2015, concerning your situation in the job training programme that you describe.
I would like to inform you that in 2013 the Committee found that Ireland was in breach of Article 12 of the Social Charter, which guarantees the right to social security, on the ground that the minimum level of unemployment benefit was inadequate.
However, although Ireland ratified the Additional Protocol to the European Social Charter providing for a system of Collective Complaints on 4 November 2000, the European Committee of Social Rights has no competence, within the scope of the European Social Charter, to examine individual applications.
Therefore, the Secretariat of the Committee cannot provide any follow up to your letter.
With regards
Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law
Department of the European Social Charter
Council of Europe
67075 Strasbourg Cedex, France
Tel: +33(0)3 88 41 22 08
Fax: +33(0)3 88 41 37 00
http://www.coe.int/socialcharter
http://www.coe.int”
Indeed we do know more about cows. The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation and the Department of Agriculture have data bases that logs the date the cow was impregnated, the sire, expected date of calving, the production figures of the dam, the expected production figures of the calf based on the dams history and the sires previous progeny. Now using genetic information, can predict some production figures in a process called Genomics. They spot check registrations using DNA to ensure that farmers are associating the correct calf to its dam and sire. Every movement is logged and recorded, deaths need to be logged and certs issues. Poor recording by farmers will be penalised severely. Let’s hope big brother doesn’t ever reach that level.
I didn’t have a problem so much with the data being collected. The uneducated, racist and incredibly insensitive manner it was phrased enraged me. Cultural background is one thing but labelling children white Irish, Chinese or other Asians, black African, or other black background, is so 1950′s and entirely inappropriate. Read the document to really see where the problem lies. Colour not culture was what was collected. There are black Irish and White Africans so what exactly were they looking for? I would question the integrity of the person who wrote this and passed this as a working document.
Putting ‘it has always been said…’ before it, allows you to make whatever assertion you like… regardless of whether or not it was or wasn’t ever said once! I’d like to hear from the cows on this
What about the space left on the form for schools to add any other info… If for example a pupil is missing from school for whatever reason and a school notes a poor attendance record… Will future potential employers use this as a way of gathering more info before hiring similar to the way they use Facebook to check out interviewees…. I for one don’t see why they need to hold onto this info until the child reached the age of 30 and do not trust the government to secure such data….
Even more importantly, the school is the designated data controller. Most schools have a maths teacher with an ecdl qualification at most managing the security of their PCs and network and its connection to the internet. An 8-yr old kid would probably take no more than 10mins to hack it wide open.
The data once collected should be transferred to a secure site monitored by it security specialists and local copies destroyed.
Well that must mean the department of agriculture has its house more in order than the department of education
Trying to rectify the huge PC gaps left by years of policy deficits – the key info here should have remained mandatory on birth certs system – fathers name as well as the mothers, country of origin, ethnicity – God forbid they did that right.
Deutschland Deutschland uber alles…..I feel the hand of Fuhrer Merkel on this……
There’s a serious lack of joined up thinking in the delivery of services in this country. Many of those services are mediocre to put it mildly. If services can be improved and resources targeted using the information collected then I have no problem.
The Journal has just become another propaganda machine.
It’s not just an issue for primary schools. The database is also there regarding secondary school students. It’s called PPOD.
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