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The Department of Education has issued a new circular accepting it cannot defund the education of children whose parents do not want their kid's data to be in POD. They'll only accept a written request as the basis of that refusal, however. So, here's one you can use that meets the requirements (Now in English or Irish, thanks to an enterprising parent).
As longstanding, longsuffering readers will be aware, for the past year and a bit, I have been arguing that the Primary Online Database (POD) was illegal. Though that argument has not come to a conclusion (and I expect it to be successful) the Department of Education has been forced into a series of climbdowns along the way.
I did respond to the email set out earlier this week, where the Dept of Education said. .
I made a complaint regarding the treatment of Junior Infants data by the Department of Education in their latest effort to make their Primary Online Database legal. I received no substantial response, and so I forwarded the complaint to the Data Protection Commissioner. After that, I received the reply below.
Dear Sirs, I am writing to you to object to operation of the Primary Online Database scheme as it applies to Junior Infant students.
Ever since the introduction of the Primary Online Database of schoolchildren by the Department of Education, the Department and its Minister have been eager to point out that any parent who refused to allow a child’s data to be transferred would see that child’s education defunded. Well, for all children other than this week’s crop of new Junior Infants, that threat has now collapsed.
The misbegotten Primary Online Database project is on its third piece of legislation designed to try to make it legal. On the 21st July, The Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton signed a Ministerial Order seeking to try to provide a legislative basis for the transfer of children’s data from schools to the Department of Education. You can take a look at SI 317 of 2015 here.
Rather missing the point of an FOI Act, the Department of Education has refused to release documents relating to the Primary Online Database- which the Data Protection Commissioner’s Office has confirmed is operating without proper legal basis.
The Data Protection Commissioner's Office today confirmed that, having investigated the Primary Online Database, they found that parental concerns raised were valid and that, even following changes to the scheme in April, the POD would require further legislation to be lawful.
Tweeter @johnhamill151 FOI'd his children's data from POD and yesterday published what he got back. To his surprise, he discovered the Department was storing data in POD on his kids which was completely unrelated to their primary school education and data of a sort he had never been aware would be collected or stored.
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