Irish Students Score Better on OECD PISA Digital Literacy Test - Minister Quinn welcomes improvement in literacy scores [education.ie]
- Published: 28 June 2011
Irish students' ability to read computer based text such as emails and websites is significantly above the average of 19 OECD countries, according to a new OECD report.
The students in Irish schools ranked 8th out of the 19 countries that participated in the OECD's Digital Literacy test. Just four countries, Korea, New Zealand, Australia and Japan, had significantly higher scores than Ireland.
The above-average results of Irish students on these digital literacy tests contrasts with their poor performance in the 2009 round of the traditional pencil-and-paper PISA literacy tests.
The 2009 pencil-and-paper tests showed a marked decline in reading scores in Ireland with Irish students falling from above average to the average level in the OECD. There was some surprise at the results achieved by Irish students on the traditional reading test, as they had scored well above the OECD average in previous tests in 2000, 2003 and 2006.
These latest results seem to suggest that the reading standards of Irish 15-year olds may be better than the results achieved on the traditional pencil-and-paper test in 2009 but not at the levels scored by Irish students in 2000. Ireland's average score on the digital reading assessment, at 509 points, is 13 points higher than its average score of 496 points on the traditional pencil-and-paper PISA test in 2009.
The performance of Irish students on the digital literacy test still lags behind the Irish performance on print reading in PISA 2000 when students here scored an average of 527 points.
Full Story: www.education.ie
