Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
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369. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of children currently within the primary school system who have been identified with a first percentile word reading score and a second percentile word reading score; and the share of these pupils who currently attend reading schools. [8054/23]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I would like to thank the Deputy for his question on literacy test scores.

Since 2012 primary schools have been administering standardised testing on an annual basis to all pupils in 2nd, 4th and 6th classes.

The data requested is not available as the results of standardised tests are confidential to each individual school and therefore are not published. Primary principals and teachers have access to their own school results and are reported to their Boards of Management and the individual pupil’s results are communicated to their parents/guardians. The aggregated results of the tests must be reported to my Department.

The results of standardised testing can help schools to evaluate progress in literacy and numeracy, help to pinpoint areas for improvement and support teachers in ensuring that literacy and numeracy learning experiences meet pupils’ needs. The results of any one standardised test should not be used in isolation, nor used as baseline data for predicting future achievements, nor for solely informing decisions regarding the provision of interventions or targets within learning plans for pupils. Information from ability tests, teacher observations, parental reports, as well as the views of the pupils are also very important aspects of a thorough assessment.

In this Department, the aggregate data is used as part of a range of tools to create a profile of schools' learning support needs when allocating special education teaching resources.

I hope this information is of assistance to the Deputy.