Cog notes: Have your say on data retention

Concern about the use of data collected by schools for the Primary Online Database, particularly the long-term retention of pupils’ PPS numbers, continues. However in some circumstances, there can be good reasons for retaining data.

The chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection, Joanna Tuffy, points to the 2009 Ryan report on the abuse of children in institutions from 1936 to 2000. She hopes the new general scheme for a retention of records Bill will help ensure “these events are never forgotten and crucially, will never happen again”.

To that end, the committee invites written submissions on the Bill from groups or individuals and may later make recommendations to the Minister for Education. “We believe it is in the interests of the State to preserve the highly sensitive, personal accounts of the victims,” Tuffy says.

If you’ve something to say, act quickly: The closing date for receipt of submissions is 5pm on March 30th.

Reading time a class act

Who said newsprint was history? Second-year students from Ramsgrange Community School in New Ross were sighted recently (pictured above) getting stuck into The Irish Times – donated for the Co Wexford school’s Drop Everything and Read (Dear) initiative.

Everyone in the school – including management, students, teachers, caretaking staff and all visitors – were asked to set aside 15 minutes each day for reading. The timing for this daily dropping of tools was sprung without notice, which provoked plenty of excitement and lots of conversation about people’s reading habits, co-ordinator Louise Walsh said.

“We saw a notable increase in students randomly picking up a magazine or newspaper, outside of Dear time and outside of class time, in common areas and just reading. It became more of a norm to see students reading for pleasure at various times of the day.” She said staff agreed, despite competing demands and “curricular and examination constraints”, that they they would try to find a way to continue the initiative, possibly weekly.

Bring a baby

You've heard of BYOB. Well, the National Concert Hall has a family-friendly twist on it. At its first Bring along a Baby Baroque Concert on April 7th parents can experience an informal chamber music recital, while their toddlers sleep, feed and play around them. It's part of the concert hall's Easter education and outreach programme. There are family workshops on jazz, drumming and Gamelan, musical storytelling workshops, and an interactive string quartet concert for the family. nch.ie