GERRY SHIEL,
Madam, - In his article headed "Non-national pupils are often better readers' (The Irish Times, December 13th), your Education Correspondent, Emmet Oliver, noted that Ireland was the only industrialised country in which "non-national" 15-year-olds achieved a significantly higher average score than native students on the reading literacy element of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2000). He also suggested that Ireland's high overall ranking in the assessment (fifth of 27 countries) might be in part attributable to the strong performance of non-national students.
Lest any of your readers conclude that the Irish education system can be complacent about addressing the educational needs of its non-national students, we offer some clarifications.
First, the OECD did not address the matter of whether students were nationals of a particular country. Rather, they asked students to indicate whether or not they were born in the country in which they took the assessment, and whether or not each of their parents was born in that country. Then, it classified students as non-native (not non-national) if they were born outside the country, and both of their parents was also born outside the country. Native students were classified as those who were born in the country in which they took the assessment who indicated that both parents were born in that country.
In Ireland, non-native students were represented by just 53 in a sample of 3,854 who sat the PISA reading literacy test. On average, students in this sub-group had a higher score on the International Socio-Economic Index (a measure of socio-economic status based on the combined occupations of a student's parents) than native students, and their parents were twice as likely to have completed third-level education. Furthermore, such students tended to be clustered in a small number of fee-paying secondary schools, and four out of five of them indicated that English was the language spoken at home.
When we omitted non-native students, and computed the average score of all other students who completed the PISA reading literacy test in Ireland, we it was almost identical to the overall average score of Irish students on the assessment. This indicates that non-native students did not contribute substantively to Ireland's strong performance in reading.
In countries in which non-native students performed significantly less well than native students, they were generally represented by a much larger proportion of the sample than in Ireland. For example, 10.2 per cent of students in Germany and 11.4 per cent in Switzerland were classified as non-native. The performance of these students would have had a more substantive effect on their countries' overall scores than the 1.4 per cent of non-native students in the Irish PISA sample.
Second, no reference was made in Mr Oliver's article to "first-generation" students who sat the PISA assessment of reading literacy in Ireland (i.e., students who were born in Ireland, and who indicated that at least one parent was born outside Ireland). These students performed less well than native students. There were relatively few of them in the Irish sample (34 of 3,854) so their impact on Ireland's overall score was also minimal.
However, we know from data at primary level that more of these students (including children of recently arrived refugees and asylum-seekers) are entering the education system, and are likely to be more strongly represented in post-primary schools in the near future. The challenge for Irish educators and for society generally is to address the educational needs of first-generation and non-native students, particularly those for whom the language of instruction is not their first language, and to ensure that they reach their full potential.
If our interpretation of the contribution of non-native and first-generation students to Ireland's overall performance on PISA reading literacy is correct, how can we explain Ireland's high ranking in reading literacy, particularly in the light of less impressive performances in mathematical and scientific literacy in the same study? One explanation is provided in the Irish national report on PISA (published by the Educational Research Centre).
Although PISA is not linked directly to the curriculum of any particular country or countries, there is a strong association between the reading processes and contexts underpinning the Junior Cycle English syllabus and Junior Certificate English examination and those underpinning the PISA assessment of reading literacy. For example, students in both the Junior Certificate English exam and the PISA reading literacy assessment are required to demonstrate in writing that they can evaluate the content and structure of texts. On the other hand, associations between our Junior Cycle syllabuses and examinations in mathematics and science and the corresponding PISA assessments are considerably weaker.
Yet, the OECD maintains that the PISA assessments in these areas also test the skills and knowledge that students need for their personal development, further study and full participation in society. - Yours, etc.,
GERRY SHIEL, JUDE COSGROVE, PISA Project (Ireland), Educational Research Centre, St Patrick's College, Dublin 9.