<p>
	Parents are getting a second chance to have their children&rsquo;s ethnicity recorded in the controversial Primary Online Database (Pod).</p>
<p>
	The move follows an admission by the Department of Education that it erred in only having one category of &ldquo;Irish&rdquo; on the original questionnaire, namely &ldquo;White Irish&rdquo;.</p>
<p>
	The department said a supplementary form would be available for downloading by parents within the next week from its website education.ie, covering those questions for Pod relating to ethnicity and religion.</p>
<p>
	Parents have to give their consent to having information on these issues recorded, and completing the new form is optional.</p>
<p>
	The department said schools, where necessary, would be given added time to collect these additional forms, although the March deadline for the inputting of general Pod data remained in place.</p>
<p>
	The error had been brought to the department&rsquo;s attention by Brendan Hennessy, a father of two adopted children from Ethiopia.</p>
<p>
	In a letter to the department last Friday, he said he believed it was &ldquo;a genuine error, but it&rsquo;s a terrible mistake&rdquo;.</p>
<p>
	He wrote: &ldquo;Over 500,000 primary school children and their parents are receiving a form from the department which erroneously suggests that the only category of Irish is &lsquo;white&rsquo;.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
	Cultural background</p>
<p>
	The department acknowledged its choice of categories &ldquo;may fall short of what could be expected in today&rsquo;s multi-racial Ireland&rdquo;.</p>
<p>
	In the Census, conducted by the Central Statistics Office, there are four main headings for ethnic or cultural background: &ldquo;White&rdquo;, &ldquo;Black or Black Irish&rdquo;, &ldquo;Asian or Asian Irish&rdquo; and &ldquo;other, including mixed background&rdquo;.</p>
<p>
	In contrast, the department questionnaire offered one &ldquo;Irish&rdquo; category which was &ldquo;White Irish&rdquo;. It did, however, offer &ldquo;Black African&rdquo; or &ldquo;Any other Black background&rdquo;.</p>
<p>
	The department said it would now change the categories in the database to include such identifiers as &ldquo;Black Irish African&rdquo; or &ldquo;Asian Irish background&rdquo;.</p>
<p>
	The department is paying primary schools more than &euro;800,000 to gather the information from parents at a rate of &euro;1.50 per completed form.</p>
<p>
	The Immigrant Council of Ireland said the episode highlighted the need for further training to minimise the risk of discrimination in the delivery of education, health and other basic services.</p>
<p>
	Mr Hennessy, a policy worker with the Society of St Vincent de Paul in Co Cork said he welcomed the department&rsquo;s response and credited it with coming up with a solution &ldquo;very quickly&rdquo;.</p>
<p>
	He stressed that he supported Pod as a mechanism for gathering important educational data, and encouraged parents to complete the survey so the information properly reflected modern Irish society.</p>
<p>
	He also suggested the department might share the information at local level &ldquo;on how the form is used&rdquo; to build trust in the system and the policymaking surrounding it.</p>
<p>
	<a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/second-survey-on-children-s-ethnicity-after-white-irish-error-1.2091128">http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/second-survey-on-children-s-ethnicity-after-white-irish-error-1.2091128</a></p>
