Teachers say literacy training inadequate

MORE than one in three second-level English teachers feel inadequately trained to help tackle the poor literacy level of some students.

Low levels of ongoing training also emerge from a survey of 474 teachers of third-year students at 134 schools where 15 year olds had their reading and comprehension skills tested as part of a global study in 2009.

The test results published a year ago showed that, while their performance was around the average of students across more than 30 OECD countries, Irish scores fell more than anywhere else compared with testing in 2000. The Programme for International Assessment results showed that the proportion of students at the lowest reading levels rose from 11% to 17% between 2000 and 2009.