One in 10 teens has reading problem

ONE in 10 15-year-olds in Ireland struggles to complete basic reading tasks, a report has shown.

In addition, 17% of the same age cohort - or almost two in 10 - have difficulty with basic mathematical problems.

Nonetheless, Ireland fares well overall in the report, published this week by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

"Learning for Tomorrow's World" gives the initial results from the OECD's second programme for international student assessment (PISA), which was carried out last year and surveyed learning skills among 15-year-olds.

The OECD consists of 30 western countries, including Ireland, committed to democratic government and market economics. For comparative purposes, the OECD also carried out the PISA in 11 additional "partner" countries.

More than 250,000 students took part across the 41 countries. The survey involved pencil and paper tests lasting two hours, taken in the students' schools, and assessed math, problem-solving, science and reading skills.

In reading, Ireland performed well, ranking 7th of the 40 countries which made the final report (Britain was excluded because of an insufficient response rate from schools). In science, Ireland ranked 16th, with a majority of students performing better than their counterparts in the OECD countries.

Maths and problem-solving were less impressive. In the former category, Ireland ranked 20th, with a majority of students scoring in the mid-range of achievement.

In the latter category, Ireland ranked 21st.

The OECD, however, said standards were generally good.

"Parents in (Ireland) can be less concerned about school choice in order to enhance their children's performance, and can be confident of high and consistent performance standards across schools in the entire education system," the report noted.

However, close analysis suggests sizeable minorities of students are performing weakly in both reading and maths. Some 11% in the former category and 17% in maths could not progress beyond the lowest respective proficiency levels.

In reading, they struggled to locate straightforward information in, or make low-level inferences from, reading material; work out what a well-defined part of a text meant; or use some outside knowledge to understand it.

In maths, they struggled to extract information from a single source, and found it hard to employ basic algorithms and formulae.