Irish Students Among Top Performers In Reading

The 2018 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results have shown that Ireland's 15 year-olds are among the best in reading literacy.

The study, which takes place every three years, aims to measure how well pupils are performing in the three areas of reading, mathematics and science.

In Ireland, pupils ranked fourth out of 36 OECD countries and third out of 27 EU countries for reading literacy.

Also in reading, Ireland has significantly fewer low-performing students (11.8% below level 2) and significantly more high performers (12.1% at levels 5 & 6) than the OECD average.

The PISA results also show the difference in performance between schools in Ireland as lower than the OECD average. In Ireland, the difference between schools in student performance in reading literacy is less than half of what it is, on average, across OECD countries.

Post-primary schools in Ireland can therefore be considered relatively equitable, as well as having above average performance in the three assessment domains.

The Minister for Education and Skills Joe McHugh T.D. today welcomed the figures and said it is heartening to see how the variation between schools is significantly lower than in other countries.

Minister McHugh said: "Irish students have extremely high standards when it comes to reading, among the best there is. The number of low achieving students is among the lowest in the 77 countries tested.

"It is an envious position to be in and credit must go to the education initiatives being promoted by the Department like the National Strategy on Literacy and Numeracy for Learning and Life (2011-2020) and how these are adopted by our schools, thanks to the dedication of our teachers."

PISA 2018 is a computer-based testing format. About half of the 5,000 plus Irish students who sat the tests had previous experience in this type of testing.



(JG/CM)