Irish Students Amongst The Best In The World

A major new international study shows that Irish 15 year-old students are amongst the top performers when it comes to Reading literacy, significantly above average in Science and in line with the average across the OECD in Mathematics. Over 4,500 Irish 15-year-olds, in 165 schools, took part in one of the largest surveys of its kind ever carried out.

The results, which were published in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, showed Ireland ranked ranking 5th of 29 OECD countries and 6th of 56 countries in reading skills, while in science they ranked 14th out of the 30 OECD countries and 20th out of the 57 countries that were surveyed.

Speaking at the launch of the report Minister Hanafin welcomed the results of the OECD study saying, "I am delighted that, once again in PISA 2006, Irish 15-year-olds were among the top performers with regard to reading literacy, maintaining the position they established in the previous two cycles of PISA. They have also maintained their position in mathematics and science compared with their performance in 2000 and 2003."