Irish schools most equal when it comes to literacy, study finds 

Study found a school’s socio-economic composition has an impact on a child’s individual reading literacy scores, even after adjusting for the students’ own family background.

Irish secondary schools are among the most equal in Europe when it comes to a gap in literacy scores between privileged and underprivileged pupils, new research suggests.

A new, cross-country comparative study led by a sociologist at Trinity College Dublin also finds secondary schools here are among the most socially integrated in Europe when it comes to reading literacy.

While children attending schools that have a higher proportion of well-off students tend to score higher in reading literacy in every country, the gap between privileged and underprivileged schools varies considerably from country to country.

Using data from the OECD's 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), the study looked at the reasons why children tend to achieve better academic results in schools with more intake from privileged students. 

It found a school’s socio-economic composition has an impact on a child’s individual reading literacy scores, even after adjusting for the students’ own family background.

Classroom discipline

This is suggested to be largely due to classroom discipline, teacher support, and peer academic aspirations.

When compared with the other countries in the study, Irish secondary schools were found to be among the most socio-economically equal with respect to literacy scores.

It also found classroom climate and teaching practices were the most important factors in explaining why school social composition matters to children’s Pisa reading scores.

This was following further analysis of OECD data from six countries, including Ireland, that sort children into different academic and vocational tracks after the age of 15.

Ireland had some of the smallest school composition gaps in Europe, alongside Scandinavian and Baltic countries, according to sociologist Yekaterina Chzhen of TCD.

“Schools in France, Germany, and Hungary had the greatest differences in literacy scores between privileged and underprivileged schools.

“Overall, we found that countries that filter children into different educational tracks early, like Germany, tend to have greater differences in children’s skills achievement due to school composition than countries that separate children later in adolescence, like Ireland.”

The paper, entitled ‘Why does school socio-economic composition matter to adolescents’ academic performance?', was recently published in the peer-reviewed British Educational Research Journal. The paper is open-access and can be downloaded from the journal’s website.