PISA National Symposium Concluding Remarks

1. PISA National Symposium Concluding Remarks Eamonn Murtagh Assistant Chief Inspector Department of Education and Science

2. Role of Science in Education • …enhances learners’ understanding of themselves and the world • involves them in the active construction of their own understanding • enables learners to create new knowledge • Observation – the ability to notice significant details • Questioning • ‘What if’ … forming hypotheses

3. Ireland’s Performance in Reading Literacy, Science and Mathematics • Very good…Good…Fair • Consistently high reading literacy • Fewer low achieving students • BUT • Boys? 16% vs 8% at L1 or below? Upward trend in lower achievement?

4. Ireland’s Performance in Reading Literacy, Science and Mathematics • Science: high levels of participation – 86%; two-thirds study Higher Level • More students in Ireland than in the OECD as a whole (68% vs 62%) think that studying science is worthwhile • Achievement of students who had not taken science as a Junior Certificate subject …? • Students in schools with a high level of promotion of scientific learning scored better than students in schools with low levels of promotion

5. Ireland’s Performance in Reading Literacy, Science and Mathematics • Mathematics achievement levels consistently at the OECD average • Not as good as Czech Rep, Slovenia, Poland • Fewer high achievers – 1.6% L6 • We need: • Curriculum reform • Changes in how maths is taught • More students undertaking higher level maths • Project Maths

7. Thanks to… • Educational Research Centre • Authors of the report • National Advisory Committee • Colleagues in DES • Schools • Presenters at the symposium • Participants

8. Slán abhaile