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THE FINDINGS OF a new report signalled good progress in Irish education with our 15-year-olds performing above average across the board in maths, reading and science.
The latest OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report for 2012, published today, found significant improvements in all areas compared to the last results in 2009 when Ireland dropped from fifth place to 17th in literacy.
Ireland is now ranked ninth our of 34 countries in science, fourth in reading and 13th in maths. While we are well above average in some areas, there has been a drop in the average scores across other countries between 2009 and 2012 and this has contributed to our more favourable position.
‘Not in the top league’
We may have recovered from 2009, when there was an unexpected drop in both reading and maths, but the Department of Education itself pointed out today that scores in these areas have remained relatively unchanged since Ireland first participated in the OECD report.
The PISA report also indicates, that the education system still needs to promote reading among boys and mathematics among girls.
Speaking at Government Buildings today, Minister for Education welcomed the improvement but stressed that we are “not in the top league, and that’s where we need to go”.
“The initial teacher education, which is for both primary and secondary is now being transformed and the fruits of that will begin to manifest over the next three to four years,” he said.
Quinn also said the reform of the junior cycle in secondary schools will “address a number of the issues”.
Deep and damaging cuts
Commenting on the findings of the report, General Secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, John MacGabhann, said they endorse the “very high levels of quality in the Irish education system in spite of deep and damaging cuts in teacher numbers and attacks on programmes that help the most vulnerable students.”
The scores represent significant achievements by students and teachers and are a tribute to their resilience at a time when the austerity agenda has sidelined the irrefutable, clear case for progressive and appropriate investment in education.
The TUI also endorsed the report’s recommendation that children from disadvantaged backgrounds be targeted with additional resources or economic assistance.
“It is vital that the government fully embrace this principle in order to give every student a fair chance,” MacGabhann added.
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Where have the teacher bashers like ‘YourAuldLady’ gone? Care to comment on how the lazy Irish teachers are increasing standards despite fewer resources and worse conditions of work?
Full credit to the teachers. No credit to the clown running the department, who is currently trying to bully teachers into accepting more cuts while also making a balls of the Junior Cert.
It’s hard to know about the JC Alan. Certainly their communication is poor but the idea of replacing it is not a bad one. Finland, who have the highest PISA results (excluding production-line type systems like in Shanghai) don’t have an equivalent test either. It is this model that I think they are trying to follow.
I believe that our system and therefore our people are limited by the narrow preparation needed for the JC and later the LC. We are neither producing active citizens nor creative thinkers as we focus on rote-learning of various kinds (by and large). If teachers designed modules themselves, perhaps based on their own interests/ specialisms and organised interdiscipliary investigations and group work, the system would be stronger in my view and more in keeping with the 8 Key Competences for Life-long Learning known as the Lisbon Competences.
You ask a very interesting question, Paulo. If the resources are fewer and conditions are worse but there is an improvement in results, then one might conclude that limiting resources and and putting more constraints on working conditions induces greater creativity among teachers which translates to better teaching results. Just a thought.
I home school my child as well as him going to school. Maths is really easy to start off at an early age. kids love quizzes and prizes. I play a game of rolling 3 dice and adding up the numbers , we also play pop quiz in the car. putting the foundation in at an early age is very easy to do, parents can do a lot to help give their child a boost. Once they find things easy in school the take much more interest.
We do the same, my 9 year old could probably ace a 6th class Maths test, my only question is why the school system is so pedestrian when a lot of kids are chewing through much older material outside of school. In school its little stories about “Spot the dog” outside they are (if you put a mind to it) reading Harry Potter etc.
Parents are the prime educators of their children
“I home schooled my child as well as him going to school.”
I hope you’re not teaching him english.
Aren’t the names of languages written with a capital letter, margaret…….or, should I say Margaret? ; )
Sounds like a super idea, Simon! I must try it with my younger children.
Not where I was educated, Maria.
Oh, I thought the subject title ‘English’ is derived from the proper noun ‘English’, which refers to the language. Hence, it must be capitalised. Maybe I got it wrong.
No you didn’t get it wrong. I did!
I checked it out. It’s unequivocal. I stand corrected.
Perhaps its actually down to dedication & competence rather than throwing money at education that counts.
No money being thrown at education here so it cant be that.
Quinn also said the reform of the junior cycle in secondary schools will “address a number of the issues”.
Presumably this means further cuts. And, following the progress referred to in the headline, huge improvements in educational achievement to follow soon
Irony intended! Quinn has been an unmitigated disaster in Education. I don’t think at this stage that even he would disagree with that. he must be crying out for a reshuffle that will remove him from the site of his own disgrace
Can we not just sort out our country and take over the world?!
Just as soon as we finish all the beer.
Then we’ll do it.
Screw beer!
Tis the land of saints and scholars!!
The altar wine got them in the end.
An aptitude for blowing bubble isn’t a foundation skill for running the world…besides if we were running the world, who would bail us out ?
I don’t think the world wants to be run by you….thank you very much!
Have we improved standards because of the cuts or have the other countries in the survey gone backwards?
The article says other countries have gone backwards…or maybe they are being rigorous in their assessments ?
Most people in Ireland don’t understand clever kids. When they hear gifted they think Rainman. They don’t understand that it is as simple as ‘they learn faster’ and therefore need to be taught faster. Unfortunately these kids are not being catered for. We have minded our eldest daughter, tried our best to keep her engaged with school and in fairness her teachers have tried to, but she is struggling this year. She doesnt want to go to school because she is bored, the teacher repeats the same thing over and over. She is disrupting the rest of the class and she is challenging the teacher. I’m worried that September when she moves to secondary school may not come quick enough and she will have turned her back on the education system. She just won’t go to school and despite what people believe, these kids do not magically know the curriculum, they do still have to learn it, but they just learn it faster. These are the kids that should do really well in Maths and Science in this Country but sadly a lot of them will drop out or disengage as the damage has been done in Primary level.
ahh here there is a serious step up in what you learn when you hit second level. Primary school will bore the skull out of kids who are doing well but second level is much better.
Does your child attend learning support/resource Carina? If not she should be!! Its not supposed to be just for children who are weak, its for children who are very bright too. They get their extra more advance and challenging work from here and they can work on it when finished easier class work. Although if your school is anything like ours, because of all the cuts, the weak kids are prioritised as we dont have enough teachers to do it all. Thank you mr quinn
They have a box with extension work in it but it is ‘more of the same’. It is just learning out of a book, there is no investigation work or projects where she can stretch her mind and experiment with theory. It’s terrible to watch her struggle and cry with frustration. Nobody would accept that it is ok to put an average ability child into a classroom full of slow learners, but that is exactly what happens to these kids. They are stuck in a class with kids that learn slower than them.
Did you approach the Centre for Talented Youth based in UCD? They run brilliant courses for high achievers.
It’s in DCU! If you want to encourage your child who may be bored perhaps encourage her to start working on a project for the Young Scientist competition, I did it when I was 12 and it is well worth doing!
She was accepted into CTYI and she attended classes but it became too expensive, them she did it by correspondence but that ended up top expensive also. She did however absolutely love the courses when she was doing them.
She is going to attend the young scientist this year and see what it is all about with a view to participating the year after.
And does she not do more challenging work projects at home ? Like it or not, learning discipline to accept the more mundane parts of work/study is also part of the education process.
@Gerard, yes she does. However she spends 27.5 hrs per week in school being educated. It would be usefull if that education was somewhat geared to her level. Children also require time for other outlets apart from books such as sports, social skills etc etc. All work and no play makes jack a dull unsociable bore.
Hi Carina, just another suggestion if it was your cup of tea. Lots of private schools give out full/partial scholarships. Friends of mine from college received them and they loved it.
I don’t know much about private schools but to be honest I would be afraid she would be hot housed or allowed spend all her time glued to books rather than experiencing the real world. We are very lucky that we have a lot of very good schools where we live so we are jollying her along until she gets to September and hopefully she won’t crack up in the meantime. Thanks for your advice.
Carina, had same issues but I kept her in the school system, and she and her friend were 1st in the john hooper , cso award in Ireland this year and were named 2nd in the international competition, and also were named galway scientists of the year last week, and also won an award as outstanding scientists. Secondary school was great as was transition year. And now she’s a well rounded young woman and looking forward too college!
yes if you live in Dublin:(
Learning support is only for children performing below a certain percentile. While gifted children do come under the umbrella of Special Educational Needs, they will only be allocated resource hours if they are dual-exceptional ie if they also have a learning disability or other diagnosis
Would teachers consider offering to do maybe 2 weeks of tutorials with weaker kids over the summer months? I see it suggested above by the secretary of the TUI that resources should be made available and personally I think it would be a wonderful gesture from the teachers if they were to make available such resources to children that really need it. I guess the question is would such a short time frame make any difference!
Or perhaps the Government could reinstate the educational resources that were once in place for those children.
I think if kids are falling behind in school then the parents need to step up to the mark a bit. Some parents just package their kids off to school and expect them to come out with an education. Even 30 mins a day at home can give great benefits. I agree when they get older then extra classes at school might help, but when there just reading writing and doing basic maths, anyone can help with that. With bigger class sizes some kids might loose heart if they don’t get the proper attention they need at an early age, put the foundation in and you will reap the rewards
Completely correct of course Simon but the problem is that, and I could be wrong, but a lot of the children that are specifically requiring extra help probably come from families where education isn’t a big priority and it’s sad that these kids should miss out on getting a decent education because of something happened when they were too young to realise it’s importance and it’s easy to say that it’s the parents fault and move on but that doesn’t solve the problem. Darragh there’s only going to be more cuts to services but obviously ideal world all extra resources would be made available to these kids.
This can’t be a good thing as it will only encourage Govt to make further cuts!!
Define irony, a report on education has a malapropism in it.
For this government the word reform is a euphemism for cuts.
btw we are almost level second (with Australia) behind Canada among the English speaking countries.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/dec/03/pisa-results-country-best-reading-maths-science
Great to be in this position, no longer will VISA applications be a mystery, calculation of how much money a kid needs to live on in another currency. Yes reading and maths …good to have
I disagree . Quin has broken the total stranglehold of the RCC on education. Finally Educate Together are being awarded patronage of secondary schools and existing national schools can move to multi d if they want to. That’s a hell of an achievement in my book.
In this country at this time it is no achievement. Anyone could have done it. And it does not even begin to make up for the total disaster the rest of the system has become under his watch.
In what way will that affect academic achievements ? A new proposed CBC school in Carrigaline, Cork Cork has had five times more applicants than they have places. That suggests the people of Carrigaline and surrounding areas place a premium on an education by CBC.
How average do you need to be?
If there has been a drop in average scores in other countries, as the article says, then that suggest our position has only improved in a relative sense – is that not so ?
After attending the Science and Technology Fair in NUIG, last week end, I can say, children are really involved in Science, there, we had a very talented young woman from Athenry who came came 1st in int individual young scientist of the year, 3 young women from Cork who were EU winners and 2 girls who came 2nd in the international CSO competition, along with loads of brilliant displays by children from local schools. Well done to all involved
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