Sir, – The Minister for Education (Education, December 10th) rightly praises schools for Ireland’s improved Pisa scores despite the severe cutbacks experienced due to economic recession.
However, the Minister pays only scant regard to Ireland’s continued poor performance in relation to the fewer numbers achieving at the higher levels in maths and science.
While the Minister admits to being worried about this situation, he doesn’t propose any solution, preferring to focus on “the slow long-term task of improving schools.” In his article the Minister compares us favourably to Finland while failing to point out that in Finland more than 15 per cent of students are performing at or above level 5 on the Pisa tests in mathematics compared to Ireland at 10.7 per cent. We are also well behind our counterparts in Germany and Poland at this level, and slightly behind the United Kingdom.
Given that most of the jobs in the technology sector require a high level of mathematical proficiency and that it is seemingly the objective of the Government to push the so- called smart economy, it seems reasonable to ask what structure the Government might put in place for our bright students to be able to achieve at a level appropriate to their abilities? – Yours, etc,
Dr COLM O’REILLY,
Director,
Centre for Talented Youth
Ireland,
Dublin City University,
Dublin 9.