Irish 15-year-olds better readers than peers across UK and North, study finds

New research carried out in the UK looks to Ireland to examine the factors behind why 15-year-olds here consistently score higher in reading than their counterparts in England, Scotland, Wales, and the North.

Policies tackling disadvantage, community links, and more autonomy for schools are factors believed to be contributing towards better literacy among young people here than in the UK and Northern Ireland.

Research carried out in the UK looks to Ireland to examine the factors behind why 15-year-olds here consistently score higher in reading than their counterparts in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Ireland has a track record of high reading scores in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which ranks Irish students among the best readers in the developed world.

The tests, which measure how well 15-year-old students are performing in reading, maths, and science, are conducted every three years.

In 2018, students here scored significantly higher in PISA in reading literacy than students in the UK and Northern Ireland.

This was consistent across all PISA reading cognitive processes of locating, understanding, and evaluating, and whether reading single or multiple texts.

Compared to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Ireland also had a smaller proportion of students at the lowest PISA reading proficiency levels. Ireland also had a high proportion of students reading at the higher levels. 

In PISA 2018, England had a similar proportion of high-achieving pupils to Ireland but it also had a higher percentage of pupils at the lowest levels.

Carried out by the National Foundation for Educational Research, the study looked to policymakers and education experts here.

Early focus on education disadvantage

The historically early focus on education disadvantage here may go some way towards explaining the lower proportions of students working at the lower PISA proficiency levels, the study notes. 

Here, there was an "intensification" of work on educational disadvantage in the 1980s and 1990s, which dates back further than many similar initiatives in the UK and Northern Ireland. 

Although Scotland’s Social Justice Strategy and England’s Excellence in Cities initiative were established in 1999, "it can take many years for policy to become fully embedded and for impact to be seen at a national level". 

Two long-term policy initiatives, Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) and the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy (NLNS) were pointed to by those taking part in the study as instrumental in driving reading improvement here.

These policies consolidated and elaborated upon previous policies addressing disadvantage and the curriculum, which has been reflected in strong levels of basic literacy over decades.

Each of the experts interviewed regarded the focus on engagement with families and local communities as being of particular importance to the success of each policy. 

Integrated policymaking and a school's autonomy were also cited as important factors. 

This creates "a sense of not only ownership of the policies implemented, but also allowing them to select the strands of the policy that are most relevant to their schools and classrooms."

Another key theme, mentioned by all participants, was the shared cultural focus on reading and literacy here, and the general esteem in which schooling and education are held.