Irish children at top of literacy league

THE reading skills of young Irish people is improving, a research document has found.

The Education Research Centre (ERC) at St Patrick’s College in Dublin has made comparisons between OECD assessments of reading skills among 15-year-olds in 2000 and an international adult literacy study five years earlier.

They found that, in items common to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000 and the 1995 International Adult Literacy Study (IALS), fewer people scored at the lowest level in the more recent research.