Questions about ethnicity for a new database of primary school children have the potential to cause serious confusion among parents, the Department of Education has been told by school principals.

Complaints from schools to the department about the Primary Online Database – in place since last September – include worries that non-English-speaking parents might misunderstand the questions about language as well as ethnicity.

Emails to the department show school principals from around the country were still sending questions about the database months after they were asked to begin adding personal information to it.

The records were released under the Freedom of Information Act.

A principal at one Cork school with pupils or parents from 41 countries said some parents had misunderstood previous surveys and described themselves as “Irish Travellers”, which “they clearly were not”.

He said “our experience is that many families from Asia and Africa will identify themselves as ‘Irish’ and will claim that ‘English’ is one of the languages spoken in the home.

“This does not reflect the reality on the ground.”

‘Work hard’

When asked to describe their identity from a given list in one of its own surveys, the school had received answers such as “I am 41”, “I work hard”and “I am tall”.

The principal of a Dublin school said 68 per cent of families in its population did not speak English as a first language.

She feared parents would feel compelled to say they did speak it at home, which had the potential to “reduce crucial resources to my school”.

A number of schools raised questions about the ethnicity category, inquiring whether it meant country of origin or ethnic background and what to do if a child had dual citizenship.

Principals were been asked from last September to enter personal details such as information about children’s special educational needs, religion, ethnicity and PPS numbers into the database.

The department says it will be used for statistical and planning purposes.

It recently rowed back on some of the information it was seeking and will no longer seek to keep children’s information at least until their 30th birthdays as originally planned. It also changed the ethnicity categories after it emerged children could not be recorded, for example, as ‘“Black Irish’”.