Teen reading and maths skills show sharp decline

IRELAND’s ambitions to be seen as a smart economy have suffered a serious setback as the reading skills of teenagers here have fallen more than in any other developed country in the last decade.

The shocking finding is compounded by a further drop in maths standards among our 15-year-olds, who were significantly below average for 33 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The only good news in the OECD’s 2009 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) report is that our teenagers perform significantly above average in science, mainly due to its introduction as a primary subject a decade ago and an updated Junior Certificate syllabus in 2004.