MINISTER FOR Education Ruairí Quinn says there is no contradiction in findings between the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the State Examinations Commission on falling standards in English and Maths among Junior Certificate students.
The 2009 OECD report, published last December, found there had been a dramatic decline in the performance of Irish 15-year-olds in reading and maths.
Since 2000 the ranking of Irish students fell from 5th to 17th in English and from 16th to 25th in maths. The report found that almost 25 per cent of Irish 15-year-olds were “functionally illiterate”.
In a briefing to the Department of Education, however, the examinations commission said that there had been no “discernible diminution” of standards in either English or maths at Junior Certificate level.
The OECD report is based on the programme for international student assessment, which administered a two-hour written test to almost 4,000 Irish 15-year-olds.
The commission’s findings are based on an analysis of Junior Certificate scripts from previous years. Examiners looked at 27 scripts in each subject, selected at random from exams that took place in the last decade.
“There isn’t really a contradiction; it’s a question of how you look at it,” Mr Quinn said. “One is a league table of different countries – approximately 60 countries – and our relative position within that league table has dramatically slipped.”
Mr Quinn said the OECD report did not reflect a large fall in standards domestically, but instead that other nations in the tables “have dramatically improved”. He did, however, admit that there had been “a decline in standards”, but insisted “it’s not as precipitous as those original [OECD] figures will suggest”. The Minister said he would be launching a national literacy strategy later this month and signalled a clear intention to restore Ireland’s position in the OECD tables in future years.
“Part of declared Government policy in the programme for government is that we’re going to get back into the top 10, not just for literacy, but for numeracy and scientific matters as well,” he said.
The Minster was speaking in UCD at the installation of a 1930s stained glass window commemorating Kevin Barry, a medical student and Irish Volunteers member hanged in 1920 for his part in an ambush on British soldiers.
The window was first unveiled in UCD’s original building on Earlsfort Terrace in 1934, and its relocation marks, the university says, the final stage of their move to Belfield, which began over 30 years ago.
The last engineering and medical students transferred to the Belfield campus from Earlsfort Terrace in 2007, 26 years after the building had started being used as the National Concert Hall.