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.

The results are the latest from a series of extensive testing in OECD countries every three years and more than 3,900 students at 144 Irish schools took part in the spring of 2009.

Their scores show, since 2000, the reading ability

of the middle-scoring Irish 15-year-olds has dropped by 31 points to 496 of a maximum 600.

This has pushed us from fifth-best country to mid-table 17th, and to 21st out of 65 countries when non-OECD nations are included.

While the outcomes from the March 2009 tests leave us slightly above the OECD reading average, Ireland is one of just four countries with a statistically-significant fall since 2000.

More Irish students than a decade ago scored below the minimum standard in reading needed for future participation in education, work and society — almost one-in-four boys are at this low level, compared to one-in-nine girls — and the proportion of students with top reading scores halved to just 7% in the same period.

Education Minister Mary Coughlan said the declining scores are disappointing but they do not reflect largely unchanged literacy standards recorded in national testing of primary pupils or comparisons of standards in Junior Certificate English and maths since 2000. But, she said, ongoing concerns about reading and maths were behind her recent decision to seek an overhaul in these areas of education.

Analysis of the findings by the Educational Research Centre (ERC) at St Patrick’s College in Dublin, backed by experts from Statistics Canada, suggest the falling scores in reading and maths have been over-estimated. They attribute this to changed testing methods, a rise in migrant students from 2% to 8% of our schoolgoing population, more students with special needs at second level, fewer low-performing students dropping out of school and more Irish schools with particularly low scores this time around.

“The changes in the schoolgoing population account for some, but not all, of the decline in reading and maths,” said ERC associate researcher Rachel Perkins.

Department of Education chief inspector Harold Hislop said it would be wrong to suggest, however, that the results do not reflect problems. The inspectorate last month reported poor preparation by 14% of primary teachers whose English and maths lessons were randomly inspected in the past year.