Junior Cycle Profile of Achievement Award

News December 8, 2017

For the information of parents/guardians of students who will receive a Junior Cycle
Profile of Achievement (JCPA) award in 2017

 

Introduction

It is required by data protection law that before schools commence processing of any
personal data a school must first bring a privacy notice on how the student’s personal data
will be processed to the attention of parents/guardians. This privacy notice relates to those
students who have undertaken Junior Cycle at Level 3 of the National Qualifications
Framework i.e. those students who have undertaken Junior Cycle State Examinations.

Process
One of the functions of the Department of Education and Skills is to provide support services
to recognised schools. In recent years the Department has developed the Post-Primary
Online Database (PPOD) to assist schools in recording and processing details of students
enrolled in post-primary schools.
This document sets out the information in relation to how students’ personal data held on the
Department’s Post-Primary Online Database (PPOD1) will be used to produce the Junior
Cycle Profile of Achievement (JCPA). The JCPA will replace the Junior Certificate award
from 2017. The JCPA will be awarded by the school to the student for the first time in late
2017. This notice relates to those students who sat Junior Cycle State Examinations
(National Framework of Qualifications Level 3) in June 2017.
The diagram below shows how the student data will be shared in order to produce a JCPA
for every student.

 

Schools will be enabled to record additional student data, see Appendix A, on P-POD for
the purpose of producing a Junior Cycle Profile of Achievement (JCPA) for each of their
students who completes the Junior Cycle.

This approach enables
a. schools to record on PPOD, in advance of the Junior Cycle/Certificate State
examination, the subjects, short courses and Priority Learning Units (PLUs) that a
student is undertaking
b. the State Examinations Commission (SEC) will provide state examinations final
results electronically to the Department of Education and Skills for upload to PPOD
and association of these results with each student.
c. Department of Education and Skills to provide the JCPAs electronically to schools for
each student.
d. schools to complete the ‘other areas of learning’ section of the JCPA for each
student and deliver the award to students. The ‘other areas of learning’ section of the
JCPA allows the school to report on other learning experiences and events that the
student has participated in outside the formal timetabled curriculum. The data
entered at school level for ‘other areas of learning’ will not be stored on the
Department’s database.
e. following production of the JCPA for each student the school will retain a copy of the
full JCPA for each student.
 once JCPAs are produced the data will be anonymised by the Department of
Education & Skills and used in statistical analysis. No identifiable individual data is
used by the Department
 only a small number of staff within the Department of Education & Skills has access
to the personal data and then solely to provide technical support to your school when
it is using PPOD.
 student data as set out in Appendix A will not be shared with anyone else other than
another post-primary school in which the student enrols.
 Pursuant to Section 3 and Section 4 of the Data Protection Acts, you may access
your personal data and request a copy of your data held on PPOD by contacting your
school, or if you are a former student by contacting the Department of Education &
Skills
 Under data protection law you may object to the processing of your data or seek to
have the data corrected

 More detail on use of personal data by the Department is contained in the FAQ on P-
POD available on https://www.education.ie/en/The-Department/Data-
Protection/FAQ.html

 The Department of Education & Skills Data Controller for PPOD is the Principal
Officer in the Parents, Learners and Database Section within the Department who
can be contacted by e-mailing [email protected]
 The Data Protection Officer for the Department may be contacted by e-mailing
[email protected]

 

APPENDIX A
List of post-primary student personal data2 recorded by post-primary schools on PPOD for the purpose of producing the Junior Cycle Profile of Achievement (JCPA). The purpose for which each item is collected is explained in the FAQ for P-POD which is available on www.education.ie

This type of data was stored on PPOD for the first time in 2016/17
For each subject where an examination held by the State Examinations Commission was taken

 Level taken in the final examination
 Outcome of Classroom-Based Assessments 1 and 23
 Predicted medium through which final examination taken Irish/English
 Overall grade awarded by State Examinations Commission
 Annotation of result to indicate a subject was assessed except for a particular element e.g. aural is
missing

For each short course taken up to a maximum of 4 short courses per student

 Code
 Title
 Level of Learning Programme – 2 or 3
 Medium Irish/English
 Outcome of Classroom- Based Assessment

In addition the following data provide by the State Examinations Commission will be printed on your JCPA

 Forename and Surname – as provided to the State Examination Commission
 Date of Birth – to aid identification whether there are more than two students with the same name
 State examination candidate number – to assist with any follow up query with State Examinations

Information on other personal data stored outside of PPOD and used by your school in producing your JCPA is available in your school’s Data Protection Policy a copy of which may be obtained from your school. Information on the all other personal data of students collected and processed by schools using PPOD is available in the Fair Processing Note for P-POD copies of which are available at www.education.ie