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Minister Bruton welcomes publication of OECD PISA Results

Education Minister Richard Bruton today welcomed the latest OECD PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results which show that in 2015, Ireland’s 15-year-olds are among the best in OECD countries in reading and are performing significantly higher than the OECD average in mathematics and science.   

PISA takes place every three years and aims to measure how well students, at age 15, are performing in reading, mathematics and science.   

The key findings of the report include:

  •        In reading, Irish students ranked 3rd out of 35 OECD countries, 2nd among EU countries, and 5th out of all countries participating in PISA 2015
  •        In science, Irish students ranked 13th out of 35 OECD countries, 6th among EU countries and 19th out of all countries participating in PISA 2015
  •        In mathematics, Irish students ranked 13th of 35 OECD countries, 9th among EU countries and 18th out of all countries participating in PISA 2015.
  •        All three test domains (reading, maths and science) showed some gender differences in results, with girls performing better than boys in reading and boys performing better than girls in mathematics and science. 

 Minister Bruton said:

The Action Plan for Education, which has the overall aim of making Ireland the best education and training service in Europe within a decade, outlines a series of ambitious actions to further improve our performance in maths and science in particular, including introducing coding and computer science throughout the school curriculum, a new science curriculum at junior cycle from September this year, a comprehensive National Policy Statement on STEM in schools and ambitious new measures to upskill science and maths teachers. The Digital Strategy for Schools and the investment of €210m over its lifetime will also be a major factor in implementing change.

We also need to reduce the gaps in gender performance in all areas, and also improve the performance of our higher achievers and address higher order thinking. I am encouraged by the good progress made by lower achieving students in terms of improving their performance.

The Minister commended the report’s authors and thanked all of the students who took part in the study and all of those who completed questionnaires as part of the PISA report.

See the Department of Education website for further information.