The performance of students in maths may be disappointing but an OECD survey published yesterday represents a strong international endorsement of the Irish education system. The Republic is one of a handful of states, it remarks, where parents "can rely on high and consistent performance standards across schools in the entire education system". This begs the question: how many other aspects of the public service would receive such a strong international endorsement?
The OECD traces the exceptionally strong performance of our teenagers in reading and literacy back to strong parental and family involvement. Strangely, Irish teenagers are continuing to rank among the top six OECD states in reading, even though works of poetry and literature are less common in many Irish homes, certainly when compared to other OECD states.
The OECD study results in science, placing Irish students slightly above the OECD average, are better than might have been expected given the declining level of student interest in physics and chemistry at Leaving Cert level. Remarkably, science has only recently taken its place in the primary schools curriculum so those surveyed had much less experience of the subject than their OECD counterparts.
The results in maths are the most disheartening. The Republic is ranked 22nd of the 58 participating countries, a distance away from the highest-performing states like Finland. To compound our difficulties, no progress has been made since the last OECD reports in 2000 and 2003. These results should be weighed not only against the overall OECD standard but against the Government's lofty ambitions for a "Knowledge Economy".
A world-class performance in maths is a sine qua non of such a "Knowledge Economy" but there are few grounds for optimism on the basis of yesterday's report. Minister for Education Mary Hanafin openly acknowledged that the results in maths are disappointing. More of our high- achieving students in other subjects need to perform at a higher level in maths, she said. The poor performance in maths has continued unabated for almost a decade. This year, fewer than 7,000 of the 50,000 Leaving Cert students gained Grade C or better in higher-level maths, the minimum requirement for third-level courses in engineering and related areas.
There are plans to introduce a new maths course and to update teaching methods. But there is no quick fix; the depressing news, based on trends elsewhere, is that it could be a generation before we see real improvement.