Sir, – The Minister for Education states there is no evidence to support the contention that Ireland has an excellent education system and that it has a long way to go to become world class (Home News, September 6th).
Ironically the World Economic Forum (WEF) published its Global Competitiveness Report for 2013-2014 on September 4th, and this highly respected international report appears to contradict the minister's view. One of the main pillars of that report is the World Economic Forum's ranking of the education systems in each of the 148 countries whose competitiveness it assessed this year. The report uses the adjective "excellent" to describe Ireland's primary education system in its summary and credits both our "excellent" health and primary education systems for contributing significantly to Ireland's competitiveness. The report ranks the "quality" of primary education in Ireland as 8th best in the world out of 148 countries.
It also praises our “strong” higher education and training system which it ranks 18th in the world and again credits this as a key factor in maintaining our overall competitiveness. In fact our overall competitiveness, at 28th in the world, lags well behind our “excellent” and “strong” education system’s performance.
Significant competitive disadvantages identified by the WEF report are our macroeconomic environment, ranked 134th of the 148 world economies studied, the budget deficit, ranked 137th, national debt 142nd, financial market development 85th, soundness of banks, 146th; ease of access to loans 127th; wastefulness of government spending 55th; government procurement of advanced technologies, 70th; and quality of auditing and reporting in Ireland, 58th. By contrast the only area of our education system that it identified as being a “competitive disadvantage” was our schools’ poor access to the internet which it ranked 43rd out of 148.
In Ireland's case, any ranking below 28th on any factor is seen by the report as being a competitive disadvantage. The World Economic Forum clearly sees the quality of our education system as a significant global competitive advantage even if Mr Quinn does not. Given that this is the opinion of The World (my emphasis) Economic Forum in its global competitiveness report; I think the question now is; "With which other planet's education systems is the Minister comparing the Irish education system?", because it certainly isn't Earth's!
Rather than disparaging the system for which he is currently responsible, the minister should be highlighting its high global competitive standing, taking the credit for that as a Labour Minister and defending it from attack in the forthcoming budget. In this way he can ensure that our “excellent” primary and “strong” higher education and training systems can retain or improve those highly impressive world rankings. – Yours, etc,
SEAMUS LONG,
Monaleen,
Limerick.