Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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Question 125: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his views on the recent OECD Pisa Digital Literacy Test. [21773/11]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The OECD PISA 2009 Digital Literacy Assessment showed that Irish students' ability to read computer-based text was significantly above the average of the 19 OECD countries that took the test. It is reassuring to see that students in Ireland compare very well with their OECD counterparts in this study but there is no room for complacency about reading standards in our schools. The above-average results of Irish students on the digital literacy tests contrasts with their poor performance in the 2009 round of the traditional pencil-and-paper PISA literacy tests. These results seem to suggest that the reading standards of Irish 15-year olds may be better than the poor results achieved on the traditional pencil-and-paper test in 2009 but not at the above-average levels scored by Irish students in 2000.