Sir, - "We need to recognise that it was the effectiveness of our educational system that won spectacular economic opportunities for so many children in the 1990s", says Garret FitzGerald (April 6th). A lesson to be learned from the teachers' strike. Indeed?
Perhaps he can then explain why we have one of the worst education records in the developed world? One in three pupils leaving Irish schools at 16 "have inadequate basic skills", says last month's OECD report, leaving Ireland with one of the worst records in the developed world!
In 1995, the OECD reported that our education system was poor, not up to international standards and gave as two probable causes "the shortness of the school year" and lack of a system of identifying "poor performing schools".
Incidentally, Garret FitzGerald writing in the Observer (March 9th, 1997), pointed out that teachers in Ireland were paid "between 40 and 45 per cent higher than the European average".
Between that and a 23 per cent "functionally illiterate" rate of our adult population, the case for a 30 per cent rise in pay seems dubious to put it mildly. - Yours, etc.,
Patrick Breslin, Glasnevin, Dublin 11.