Under the Data Protection Act (1988), schools are obliged to place strict limits on access to school files. Somehow this has come to mean that students - and their parents - only have restricted access to information held on them

As a parent, it is understandable that you would want to make sure your child is getting on well at school. By talking to teachers, attending parent-teacher meetings and communicating with your child, you try to build up a picture of their school life.

Yet, under the Data Protection Act (1988), schools are obliged to place strict limits on access to school files. So what does this mean for the parents, schools and students involved?

According to Sean Sweeney of the Data Protection Commission, schools can be asked by data controllers to justify the relevance of any information they hold on their students. Typically, the type of information a school would hold includes the name, address and home telephone number of the student, attendance records and other sensitive material such as information on a student's physical and mental health, religion and any special needs they might have.

The issue of the type of data held by schools is a controversial one, however. While a school will never give its school list to a commercial company, it will sometimes allow a company to market its products through the school, say parents' representatives.

According to Barbara Johnson of the Congress of Catholic Secondary School Parent Associations (CSPA), which represents parents in more than 130 schools, up until recently, members of her association complained that financial institutions were letting children (including primary students) open up bank accounts without their parents' knowledge. This was done by asking schools to verify the information contained on the students' forms instead of contacting parents.

Other ways outside companies have attempted to gain information have been through sponsorship of sports equipment and school raffles where children give their and, by extension, their parents' details in order to win a prize.

"Schools are actually data collectors," she says. "But it should be for information purposes only. . . parents need to be made aware that most schools have a lot of data about them.

"There is a lot of pressure on schools to make up the shortfall (in funding)," she says. "I think it is dreadful schools are put in this position. We've made parents aware of the questions they should be asking now. We advise parents to write and ask to be informed of any school visitors, for whatever reason they are there."

Yet according to Sweeney, parents themselves can sometimes be partly to blame in attempting to access information, such as school mailing lists, albeit for the most genuine of reasons.

Parents' committees, he says, complain about being unable to access full lists of children in schools in order to do a mailshot. While this is usually done on behalf of the school - as part of a fundraising drive, for example - the data a school holds can only be used for official school business, he says. As a result, schools can contact parents' groups and say they are not releasing the information, due to their obligations under the Data Protection Act, although if they get the consent of the people involved, they can divulge this information.

Another obligation that schools have, he says, is to ensure that all electronic data is stored in such a manner as to prevent unauthorised access.

"There would be concerns if there was free access," he says. "The school should have some procedure on how access is controlled. There should be a record system so they know which teacher is accessing which file."

While this applies only to electronic records, which are generally easier to access, copy and e-mail to another person, it has given rise to some problems for schools. At issue is the Data Protection Office's requirement that schools register with them. By filling out a form, a school indicates who they are, the type of information they hold, and whether it is sensitive in nature. This then is made available for public inspection, as a means of identifying those people who are processing data in categories that would be classified as sensitive.

The thinking behind it is that allows anyone wondering whether their (or their child's) school holds sensitive information to make an application to find out what sort of information it is they hold.

The catch, however, is that there is a fee to register: schools with 25 staff or under must pay €63 and those with more than 25 pay €317, according to John Carr of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO).

"The charge is another tax on schools on top of the lengths they have to go to ensure the information is safe," he says. "Schools have, for a long time, abided by the requirements of the Act. . . in recent years they have put a lot of money into basic things such as filing cabinets to ensure records are kept safe. This is especially true in the case of special-needs children. Schools lock filing cabinets religiously."

As a result, he says, the INTO would like to see a situation whereby either the Department of Education would meet these costs or that the Data Protection Commissioner would waive such fees for schools.

Under the terms of the Data Protection Act, the only individual who has the right to seek access to a file - outside of the data controller (in this case, the school) and other Government bodies (such as the Department of Education) - is the person whose information is contained on that file. This would mean that, ordinarily, parents could not access their child's file. The Act does, however, allow for other legislation to make separate provisions with regards to access.

The Education Act (1998) does exactly this, stating that parents of a student have the right to access records kept by that school relating to the progress of that student in his or her education.

While the logic behind this is understandable - particularly when applied to younger students - according to Emer Ní Chúagáin of the Union of Secondary Students of Ireland, such unfettered access is a matter of concern for older second-level students.

"We would have concerns about whether a student of 16 to 18 should have their parent called in about certain matters," she says. "You could be talking about counselling for an eating disorder, for example. . . young people have the right to privacy as well, particularly at second level.

"It's unfair there isn't a clause which in some way ensures the right to privacy of the student. There is always a condition in which students' rights are ignored. When it comes to young people, it is typical," she says.

"I'm 16 years old. I think I have enough cop on to want to have the right to privacy - and the cop on not to abuse that right, either."