Irish pupils among the best in the world for literacy

More than one in four students were found to be "advanced" readers in the major international study measuring comprehension and literacy.

More than 300,000 students in almost 60 countries around the world took part in the latest Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).

In Ireland, almost 4,700 students in 148 schools took part in this round of PIRLS, the third time we have taken part since we joined in 2011.

The five-year study typically examines the reading proficiency of 10-year-old pupils in fourth class, or its equivalent internationally.

PIRLS involves a reading test, presenting students with two texts, one literary and one informational, which they are then asked to answer questions on.

Out of the 57 countries to take part, just Singapore outranked Ireland significantly in 2021, with students in Hong Kong scoring on par with Irish students.

Testing delayed

However, due to the pandemic, Ireland is one of 14 countries in the study to delay testing by six months and examined students slightly later than usual. This means that Irish students were tested at the start of fifth class during autumn 2021, so they were slightly older than usual, and at the start of a new school year. They also experienced a degree of normality after returning to classrooms following the period of online school during 2020 and early 2021.

The later testing may have acted as an overall advantage, and experts cautioned against directly comparing this round of test scores to previous results from 2016 or 2011. They also cautioned against directly comparing Ireland’s scores against other countries who took part and tested earlier in the cycle.

They believe it is likely Singapore and Hong Kong could have outperformed Ireland in a normal testing cycle and that pupils in Ireland would probably have performed less well if they had been tested in spring.

However, they do say the findings indicate Ireland retains its place “among a set of very high achieving PIRLS countries". 

Ireland ranked highest among the 14 countries that delayed testing to 2021.

Reading at a higher level

Overall, a significant proportion of Irish students were found to be reading at a higher level. In 2021, 27% of pupils were found to be ‘advanced’ readers, an increase from 21% in 2016. A further 67% of students reached the ‘high’ benchmark for reading, an increase of 5% from 2016.

Pupils in Ireland performed well across all four scales measured by PIRLS: Literary, informational, retrieval and infer, and interpret and evaluate.

Irish students performed significantly better when reading literary, fictional texts over informational ones.

They also performed significantly better when using more holistic comprehension processes than more localised, detail-oriented processes. 

Across the majority of countries, girls outperformed boys in reading, receiving higher scores in 51 out of the 57 PIRLS countries.

The gender gap between girls and boys here remains smaller than in the international context. Girls in Ireland scored higher than their male classmates on average by 11 points; the international average gender gap is 17 points.

PIRLS 2021 also included a new scale that provided an individual measure of socioeconomic status based on books in the home, parents’ education, and parents’ occupation. Ireland’s average score here was found to be relatively high when compared to many other countries.

There was also a close association between an individual’s socioeconomic status and disadvantaged school status (DEIS).

In 2021, as in 2016, pupils in urban DEIS schools achieved substantially lower scores on average in PIRLS than pupils in non-DEIS schools, indicating a continuing gap between the reading literacy of pupils in more disadvantaged and less disadvantaged schools.

The latest round of PIRLS is one of three reports administered by the Education Research Centre and published by the Department of Education on Tuesday morning.