Major international study shows Irish students are the best performers in reading literacy in the OECD and the EU

Minister Foley welcomes the publication of PISA 2022 results, showing students significantly above average in mathematics, reading and science.

Minister for Education Norma Foley today (Tuesday 5 December) launched the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 results which show Ireland’s 15 year-olds are the best in reading literacy in the EU and the OECD.

They are also performing significantly higher than the OECD average in mathematics and science.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a project of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), of which Ireland is a member. PISA takes place every three years and aims to measure how well 15 year-old students are performing in three areas – reading, mathematics and science. The main study data collection of the eight cycle of PISA was due to take place in 2021 but was postponed by one year due to COVID-19 and also moved from spring to autumn testing in Ireland.

The key findings of the 2022 assessments include:

• Irish students are the best performing in reading literacy among the 37 countries in the OECD and the 26 EU countries
• Irish students are significantly above the OECD average in all three domains – reading literacy, maths literacy and science literacy
• Ireland’s placing amongst the 81 countries taking part in the PISA project has improved in all three domains since 2018
• in reading literacy, we have moved from eighth place to second place among the 81 countries
• in science literacy, we have moved from twenty-second place to twelfth place
• in mathematical literacy, we have moved from twenty-first place to eleventh place
• there are considerably fewer low-performing students in Ireland in reading, science and mathematics compared to the average across OECD countries
• both male and female students in Ireland significantly outperformed the OECD average in all three domains

Minister Foley said:

In total 5,569 students in 170 schools in Ireland participated in PISA 2022. The tests were held in October and November last year. In total, 600,000 15-year-olds took the PISA tests in 81 countries/economies, including 37 OECD countries (26 EU countries).

The overall performance in science showed a significant increase in comparison to the 2018 PISA results, with an increase of almost eight points.

The overall performance in reading literacy remained stable compared to the 2018 PISA results.

Ireland’s average performance in mathematics declined significantly by 8 points since 2018, but this was below the average 15 point decline across OECD countries during the same time period. The change in overall mathematics performance from previous cycles merits further investigation. Follow-up reports from the Educational Research Centre (ERC), which administers PISA on behalf of the Department of Education, should provide a basis for decision making in this regard.

Minister Foley said the launch of the PISA results today gives us a unique snapshot into how 15-year-old students in Ireland apply the knowledge and skills they have learned at school in mathematics, reading and science to real-life problems and situations:

Despite the challenges experienced by the Irish education system since the previous cycle of PISA, students in Ireland continued to perform very well in PISA 2022 in relation to OECD and EU averages. This is especially true in the domain of reading, where performance compared very favourably to those of our selected comparator countries, as well as to the OECD average.

Despite above average performance in science and mathematics, Ireland has average or below average proportions of higher-achieving students in these domains indicating a challenge remains in supporting students to maximise their potential at the highest levels of proficiency in these areas. There is scope to make progress on this through ongoing developments in curriculum, pedagogy and policy. The Department of Education has established a working group to develop a policy on students who are exceptionally able or gifted.

In Ireland, there was no significant gender difference in science. But female students significantly outperformed their male counterparts in reading literacy while male students had significantly higher mean scores than female students in mathematics.

Given the gender difference, particularly in favour of females in reading and males in mathematics, the Educational Research Centre report suggests that it would be worthwhile to improve self-belief among male students in reading literacy and female students in mathematics.

Minister Foley said:

Performance of students in Ireland in reading, listings at a glance.

Source: OECD 2023c, Table I.B1.2.1.

Performance of students in Ireland in science, listings at a glance.

Source: OECD 2023c Table I.B1.2.3.

Performance of students in Ireland in mathematics, listings at a glance.

Source: OECD 2023c, Table I.B1.2.1.

• Data for this country are accompanied by an annotation, see the forthcoming PISA 2022 Technical Report for more details.

Further information:

• the national report on PISA 2022 in Ireland
• international reports on PISA 2022
• sample items from PISA mathematics, reading literacy and science

For further information, contact:

Brenda Donohue, National Project Manager, PISA 2022 – 01-8065 234

Rachel Perkins, National Research Team, PISA 2022 – 01-8065 216

PISA.Ireland@erc.ie

Additional Information on PISA

What PISA is

The programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a project of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that aims to measure how well students, at age, 15, are prepared to meet the challenges they may encounter in future life, including education. PISA assesses students in the three domains of Reading, Mathematics and Science.

PISA usually takes place every three years but the eighth cycle of the study, which was due to carry out its Main Study administration in 2021, was postponed by one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2022, the PISA assessments were administered in 37 of the 38 OECD countries (Luxembourg did not participate) and an additional 44 partner countries/economies. Students in most of these countries, including Ireland, completed the tests on computer, while four countries (all non-OECD-member countries) completed the paper-based versions.

PISA is based on a representative sample of 15-year-old students in each of the participating countries. Over 690,000 students around the world took part in PISA.

The PISA technical standards require that countries/economies reach a weighted school response rate of 85% and a weighted student response rate of 80%. In PISA 2022, seven countries/economies failed to meet the school response rate and ten countries/economies, including Ireland. Countries that did not meet the PISA technical standards were required to carry out a non-response bias analysis.

In 2022, 170 post-primary schools in Ireland took part. Ireland’s school-level participation rate was 100%, exceeding the OECD requirement of 85% participation at school level. After exemptions, refusals and absences were taken into account, 5,569 students in Ireland completed the assessment, giving a student response rate of 76.8%. This is below the OECD requirement of 80.0% and therefore a non-response bias analysis was carried out on the data for Ireland. This analysis indicated that the achievement estimates for Ireland may have been somewhat lower than those reported if all selected students had completed the assessment. This upward bias may also be smaller for trend analysis, if estimates from previous cycles are also biased in the same direction. Comparisons with previous cycles should be interpreted with consideration of the bias reported for 2022.

In Ireland in 2022, most PISA students were in Transition Year (57.0%), followed by Third Year (26.1%) and Fifth Year (16.2% of students). Less than 1% of PISA students in Ireland are in First/Second Year (0.2%) or Sixth Year (0.5%).

More information on PISA https://www.oecd.org/pisa/ and https://www.erc.ie/studies/pisa/

How PISA is administered

PISA is steered by member governments through the OECD Secretariat, on the basis of shared, policy- driven interests. PISA is managed by a consortium of institutions. In Ireland, PISA is implemented by the Educational Research Centre (ERC) on behalf of the Department of Education (DE).

In Ireland, PISA 2022 was administered in schools by inspectors from the DoE, alongside retired inspectors and principals and representatives of the ERC.

In Ireland, schools were grouped by enrolment size and sector (secondary, ETB/vocational, community/ comprehensive). Within each of the resulting nine groups, schools were ordered by the percentage of 15-year old female students in the school, and socioeconomic quartile. In each selected school, up to 46 students aged 15 years (those born between 1 August 2006 and 31 July 2007) were selected to participate.

What PISA assesses

Each cycle of PISA focuses on one ‘major domain’, to which the majority of testing time is devoted. The ‘minor domains’ provide a less detailed account of achievement.

Mathematics was the major domain in PISA 2022, while the minor domains were reading literacy and science. Mathematics was also a major domain in 2003 and 2012. Because mathematics was tested more thoroughly in 2003, 2012 and 2022, the OECD believes that more accurate trend data for mathematics can be established by comparing student performance in these years. Mathematics measures students’ ability in four content areas (Change & Relationships; Quantity; Uncertainty & Data; and Space & Shape) and four cognitive processes (Formulating, Employing, Interpreting, and Reasoning).

The mean (average) score for each domain was set to 500 with a standard deviation of 100 in the first cycle that the domain was first assessed as the major domain (i.e., the mean score was set at 500 for reading in 2000, for mathematics in 2003 and for science in 2006). This means that the tests in each cycle of PISA can be compared against the results in previous cycles. For reading, results can be compared to each cycle since 2000, while for mathematics, results can be compared to each cycle since 2003. Results for science can be compared back to 2006.

PISA also collects contextual information through questionnaires completed by students and school leaders, as well as some information from national sources (such as the DE post-primary database).

In Ireland, 2022, the questionnaires administered included:

• the core student questionnaire
• optional short questionnaire for students on ICT
• optional short questionnaire for students on well-being
• a core school questionnaire for school principals or their nominee(s)
• a parent questionnaire
• a nationally-developed questionnaire for teachers of mathematics

How the test in 2022 differed from earlier PISA assessments

PISA 2022 testing in Ireland took place between mid-October and early December 2022. Testing for PISA in Ireland has traditionally taken place in springtime (usually in the months March and April). For the 2022 cycle of PISA, a decision was made to move the testing period for Ireland to the autumn in an attempt to reduce the burden on schools during the lead up to the state examinations. In autumn 2018, the ERC undertook a feasibility study (Denner, 2023) to examine the potential for Ireland to switch from testing in spring to autumn. The study found no statistically significant differences between students’ participation rates or overall achievement in reading, mathematics or science when testing took place in autumn compared to spring.

77 of 81 participating countries, including Ireland, administered the assessment using a computer-based platform in 2022.

Alongside the development of new test content and item formats, PISA 2022 introduced adaptive testing for mathematics in computer-based countries in order to improve the accuracy and fairness of the test. The test is adaptive to each student’s ability level - students start on a common set of items, and then, at intervals, the student progresses onto items of a lower or higher difficulty, based on their previous performance. Adaptive testing was introduced for reading in PISA 2018 and will be introduced for science in PISA 2025.

Issues that should be considered in interpreting trends over time

PISA is now a computer-based assessment (since 2015), and the tests in mathematics, reading and science now include new item formats and an assessment mode that students in Ireland may not be familiar with.

The number of OECD member countries continues to increase. Costa Rica joined the OECD since the last PISA cycle, in May 2021, making it the 38th OECD country. This means that the OECD average periodically changes with the addition of new countries. All OECD countries except Luxembourg participated in PISA 2022.

Possibly related to the changing composition of the OECD itself, the OECD average has been steadily decreasing across the three domains in the most recent cycles of PISA.

Students participating in PISA 2022 in Ireland were drawn from a range of grade levels between First and Sixth years (with a majority in Transition Year).

The new Junior Cycle specifications were introduced on phased basis beginning in 2014.

The English specification was introduced in 2014, while the science specification was introduced in 2016 and thus all participating students in PISA 2022 studied under these new specifications. The new specification for mathematics was introduced in 2018 and almost all (99.5%) PISA students in Ireland had studied or were studying under the new specification.