merrion street

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has today launched the Chief Inspector’s Report on quality and standards in primary and post-primary schools and centres for education. The report, which is based on inspections carried out by the Department between 2010 and 2012, found the standards of teaching and learning were satisfactory or better in the majority of lessons inspected. Chief Inspector, Dr Harold Hislop, also noted there was room for improvement in a significant minority of lessons.

Some of the main findings were:

• Some 97 per cent of the more than 47,000 parents surveyed in primary schools felt that teaching was good in their child’s school. In post-primary schools, 87 per cent of the 20,000 parents surveyed held similar views.
• Inspectors judged that 86 per cent of lessons inspected in unannounced inspections were satisfactory or better in primary schools, while 14 per cent were not satisfactory. Similar findings emerged in whole-school evaluations in post-primary schools with 87 per cent of lessons judged to be satisfactory or better and 13 per cent not satisfactory.
• Students’ learning was found to be less than satisfactory in almost a quarter (24 per cent) of Irish lessons in primary schools and almost a third (32 per cent) of Irish lessons in post-primary schools. 
• Standards in the teaching and learning of mathematics were generally good at primary level with learning satisfactory or better in 85 per cent of lessons inspected and good results for Irish students in international surveys.