Standards in education - Response to warnings is far too slow

It’s nearly two years since former chairman of Intel Craig Barrett delivered his broadside, warning that unless we dramatically improved our education system we will become a European backwater.

Since then soaring emigration, especially amongst young graduates, has exacerbated that prospect.

Warning that emerging economies are modernising their education systems and workforce, Mr Barrett said we needed to invest heavily in education to ensure that blue-chip companies stay in Ireland. Unfortunately, he is not alone. John Herlihy of Google and Ray Stata of Analog Devices echoed his warning.

It should almost provoke a national emergency that men such as these, the very men we hope will invest here and regenerate our flatlineing economy, so publicly warn that we are not producing graduates skilled or rounded enough to satisfy their very mobile needs.

International investors — more realistically we should call them job creators — are not the only voices pointing to the sharp decline in Irish schools and colleges.

The chastening OECD PISA report, now three years old, recorded that reading levels in Ireland have dropped from 5th to 17th out of 75 and that 23% male teenagers are functionally illiterate. In only three years, Ireland’s maths ranking has dropped from 16th to 26th place.

None of this is news and, despite the fact that Education Minister Ruairi Quinn seems determined to change things, the kind of radical innovation needed to answer these challenges seems thin on the ground.

Indeed, the report in recent weeks showing that just 400 of the 1,900 teachers teaching maths at second level without a primary qualification in the subject are to pursue the qualifications to match their job is disheartening. What about the other 1,500? Are their pupils to be left to take their chances with an under-qualified teacher? This kind of response does not answer the urgency of this critical situation. Of course, it’s easy to blame teachers but there are many other issues.

Investment, or rather the lack of it, is a key one but that runs parallel to efficiency and value for money. In today’s climate, it is hard to see where much more money can be found so, for the immediate future at least, the focus must be on efficiency and value for money.

This morning, 116,774 students begin State exams in about 90 subjects. Native speakers from other EU countries will sit exams in their mother tongue. For some, this will mark the end of their formal education, but for a growing number it is a stepping stone to another level. This system may have served us well but it is clearly outdated and, like our Constitution, needs to be modernised. A constitutional forum is planned to consider how ours might be improved. Maybe it’s time to have a national forum on education, where all interests, not just teachers and academics, are represented.

This is not just an education problem, it’s a justice, economic, and social problem too, so we need to challenge the status quo and respond far more quickly to the warnings from men like Mr Barrett, Mr Herlihy, and Mr Stata or we will be that backwater faster than you can say school’s out for summer.