Progress of pupils tracked using PPS numbers
Katherine Donnelly
THE PPS numbers of children are to be used by education officials on a new database to track their progress through school.
The Department of Education is considering plans to set up the first ever national pupil database, with information fed from a number of sources, including schools and education and welfare agencies.
The system would be based on Personal Public Service (PPS) numbers -- the first time PPS numbers would be used this way -- allowing for a single platform for the exchange of information on pupils.
Snapshot
The agencies involved would include the National Educational Welfare Board (NEWB), the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) and the State Examinations Commission
The Learner Database would give a snapshot of where a child is in the education system, identify individual learner needs or alert authorities to the whereabouts of an early school leaver.
The database would help the authorities establish what happens to pupils who disappear from the system and don't make the transfer from primary to second-level school -- at the last count it was 1,000 a year -- and capture the movement of children from one area to another.
Schools and agencies involved in children's welfare have complained about the lack of a comprehensive database to allow for better planning and to address particular needs, such as socio-economic disadvantage or English language support.
Initially, the Learner Database would encompass all pupils at primary level, and at a later stage second-level students would be covered. The Programme for Government gave a commitment to the database and Education Minister Mary Hanafin confirmed it will be included in the department's Data Strategy 2008-2010 to be published next month.
However, she has stressed "the scale of operation involved, the complexities relating to multiple data requirements and the availability of staff resources to advance the project need to be carefully considered".
The department's work is now at the exploratory phase and, resulting from that, it would be possible "to scope out the likely scale and timeline", she told Labour TD Brian O'Shea in response to a Dail question.
Potential
Ms Hanafin said that improving the quality and supply of data over the three year period covered by the strategy would depend on the resources available to the department and associated agencies.
She said the database "had the potential to facilitate better policy planning and evaluation, and more detailed identification of learner needs in different parts of the country''.
"My aim is to improve the quality and scale of data gathering, subject to data protection guidelines and legislation, to provide up-to-date information on the situation in relation to any pupil -- where they are at school, if they are not in any form of education or training and how their needs can be best catered for.
"This is why the development of a single individualised Learner Database, based on the PPS number, and linked to relevant public data holdings can transform the possibilities for using high-quality information and support public services to individual learners.''
