Ms Jude Cosgrave:

Thank you very much and good afternoon to everybody. I will open by making four or five points about research and hope to reply to the questions that came up about research using international and national studies. There is more tension between research and policy when it comes to digital literacy than in many other areas relating to education because digital literacy is evolving quickly and policy relies on solid evidence. There is a real need for running research that attempts to measure a moving target and to build policy around the most recent research available. This tension is particularly acute when it comes to digital literacy. I will not cite individual studies and details but from the evidence I thought about in preparing for this meeting it seems that the intelligent use of technology is the key to many of the issues.

I will speak about a study finding that will hopefully illustrate this point. Ireland recently participated in an international study of reading, mathematics and science at fourth class level. The children in the study were around ten years old. Secondary analyses conducted by the Educational Research Centre focused on children's achievement against several background characteristics at school and pupil level. We found that approximately one in eight ten-year-olds had a smart phone, which was more than we expected, and we found, surprisingly, that those children did significantly less well on the reading test.

This is after adjusting for socioeconomic and gender differences and other home background characteristics. This suggests to me one cannot give a child, teacher or a person a piece of technology and assume everything will be grand. What is important is how it is used.

Continuing professional development, CPD, has been discussed today and it can make a real and substantial change. I will cite a research result which supports this claim. We are all familiar with the roll-out of Project Maths and the very difficult and challenging circumstances it created in schools. This was coupled with the extraordinary willingness and professionalism of teachers to try to embrace these changes because there is widespread recognition that changes are needed in maths education. As part of the roll-out of this project significant investment has been made in CPD, including CPD in using ICT for active teaching methodologies and problem-solving skills. Emerging findings from our comparison of 23 Project Maths schools with other schools which participated in PISA 2012 show the teachers in schools with targeted CPD on ICT already use ICT much more than teachers who have not benefited from this CPD. These are early findings, but they are extremely encouraging, particularly when the overall climate is a willingness to embrace change.

The research also shows that computer-based assessment appears to be more equitable for students from disadvantaged areas. We found less of a socioeconomic gap in PISA 2009 on the electronic or digital tests of reading compared with the paper-based tests. These are only emerging findings because we are still awaiting the results of PISA 2012 which will show results of computer-based assessments not only of reading but also of mathematics and problem solving. We will have these results in December which will allow us to work out more with regard to what is happening.

I wish to highlight forthcoming research which will be very important, and researchers and policymakers must use the results intelligently. The ICT census was overseen by the National Centre for Technology in Education, NCTE, and is now being overseen by the Professional Development Service for Teachers, PDST. The Education Research Centre and Saint Patrick's College will look after analysing and reporting on this. These data will come from all schools throughout the country, including primary, post-primary and special schools. It will give us good, up-to-date and detailed information on individual schools. It is important that schools are willing to respond, complete and return the surveys. PISA 2012 and PISA 2015 will provide more data on computer-based assessment.

A question was asked about the ICT resources available on a State-wide or regional basis. PISA is not designed to provide this information, but it certainly can be used to examine inequities in access usage and related issues with regard to important demographic groups such as boys and girls, more and less advantaged students and newcomer students.