Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

I share the Deputy's concern. I was in Opposition when the PISA results were first published. The heads of the results were communicated, as they are to all the national departments, in August of that year. Consequent to that information, research was commissioned by the Department. The ERC in Drumcondra also did some work on this. It was suggested that the increase in the number of immigrant pupils for whom English was not their first language was a contributing factor. Other suggestions included that the schools and pupils in which these examinations took place did not take the examination seriously and that through a combination of factors there was an over-shoot in the measurement. I think that over-shoot is very welcome. I believe it was wake-up call. One can dispute statistics - the Deputy is a professional in this area - but the net result was to shake us all out of our complacency in terms of our believing we had the best education system in the world. That is manure. We have an education system that badly needs to be reformed, which reform I have commenced.

Some €19 million was provided in last year's budget to change the way in which teachers are trained. The uniform testing measurement of the outcomes at different levels, primary and secondary, will now be standardised for the first time and there will be continuous professional development in this area. We will not know for at least another six years if this is working. Despite that extra resources have been put into the education system the outcomes have not improved, in particular in respect of young working class boys aged 15 years. Despite a huge increase in resources over a ten to 15 year period, only 20% of them came out the system functionally literate. Complacency has been struck. Stakeholders will be defensive but I am not. We will reform our education system.

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