Education reform - Teach our teachers to succeed [IrishExaminer]
- Published: 18 February 2011
IT is reassuring but frustrating that Education Minister Mary Coughlan has acknowledged that teachers beginning a career in the classroom do not have the "requisite skills" to reverse falling literacy and numeracy standards.
It is reassuring that she has accepted international evidence that our schools are not what we imagine — or need — but it is frustrating that this realisation could not have been reached, despite all of the domestic evidence, before now. Valuable time has been lost.
Ms Coughlan’s comments, and it must be accepted that she is a caretaker education minister, follow the 2010 OECD report which recorded falling standards in literacy and numeracy amongst 15-year-olds.
Our literacy rating suffered the sharpest decline of any developed country. We now rank 19th from a high of fifth. In maths and science we get the unsatisfactory rating of "average". These are not the standards needed to build much less sustain a knowledge-based economy.
The OECD report was followed by another from the Teaching Council which said that students in one of the country’s largest teacher training colleges spend too much time studying religion at the expense of other subjects. For every hour trainee primary teachers at Limerick’s Mary Immaculate College spend on science, they spend four studying religion so they can meet employment criteria laid down by Catholic bishops.
Full Story: www.examiner.ie
