Funding education - Spending is out of line

ALREADY this week we have heard that almost half of Irish people have difficulty with basic arithmetic.

Yesterday one of the reasons for this was reiterated when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) berated us – again – for our below par investment in education.

Though we spend €12,631 on every third-level student – research funding included – this is below the average in 30 developed countries.

As a proportion of national wealth, our investment in education is 25th out of 28 OECD countries. Only the Czech Republic, Italy and Slovak Republic spend less. Using another criteria we spend just 4.7% of GDP against an OECD average of 5.7%.

This is an appreciable gap and maybe we should consider rebalancing government spending to bring our education spending into line with our competitors.