Our education system is failing the test for pre-schoolers

IF there’s anything that makes us universally smug, it’s the wonderful unbeatable quality of our education system. The best little education system in the world, isn’t it? Only the other night I saw young people on the 9 o’clock News, clutching their Junior Cert results, their faces awash with relief and happiness at their results. They were on track to get the points they needed for college.

We didn’t see the kids in tears because they failed. And nobody asked what it was all about — or how cruel was it that these kids were looking at two or three years more when their lives would be judged by an absurd race for points.

Also last week the OECD, which gathers data in all the developed countries in the world, published the latest annual set of figures by which we can compare ourselves to the rest of the world. Another occasion for us all to be smug.