Disadvantaged students losing out as reading skills gap widens

The gap between the reading skills of the country’s richest and poorest students widened during the last decade, figures reveal.

The Department of Education is concerned at the at the development, which emerged from the latest analysis of our 15-year-olds’ performance in international tests carried out in 2009.

The average score among Irish students in reading was 496, just above the average of all developed countries in the OECD’s PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), but our scores had the biggest drop of 38 countries since 2000.

The results were published at the end of 2010 but new figures from the OECD show the gap between the scores of those in the bottom and top socio-economic groupings was 85 points.

Although this is slightly less than the average difference between richest and poorest in all countries, it is 12 more than the 73-point gap in Ireland in 2000.

“It does paint Ireland in a not-so-great light,” said Dr Jude Cosgrove of the Educational Research Centre at St Patrick’s College in Dublin, which administered the Irish tests.

“The fact that the relationship between socio-economic status and achievement is stronger than it was is worth worrying about.”

A Department of Education spokeswoman said the increased gap is a cause for concern.

She said the Deis programme started in 2006 to tackle educational disadvantage has been more successful than previous programmes to raise achievement in primary schools but students tested for PISA in 2009 would not have had the benefits of DEIS at primary level.

“It is to be hoped that results for PISA 2012, due to be released next December, will lead to greater understanding of the achievements of students from disadvantaged backgrounds,” she said.

While the gap between the most and least advantaged students in 2009 was more than 100 points on reading tests in many countries, including the US, Germany, and Israel, it was less than 50 in Hong Kong and Indonesia, and just 59 in Iceland, 61 in Finland, and 67 in Canada.