I’m staring out the window, gazing at trees. I’m 15 years old. My maths teacher is busy, untangling knots of algebra on the blackboard; my friend is taking it all down. She’s using different coloured pens, underlining, highlighting. There’s a tug in me because I know I should be doing the same.

Recently-qualified Irish primary teachers are giving pupils a good grounding in science, with more classroom experiments than older colleagues.

Irish students are achieving strong standards in science despite spending less time than most others learning the subject at second-level.

Children in the North scored “significantly higher” at maths than their fourth-class counterparts in the Republic, according to a major international study of students’ performance in mathematics and science.