Irish students spend third less time studying science
The lower allocation of teaching time emerged in a study of how school systems here compared with those in other countries.
The Educational Research Centre, an independent statutory body, also found that Ireland is unusual for the high proportion of its schools that are private and faith-based.
For students here, the average amount of time spent learning science is 90 hours during second year of second-level school.
In 56 countries where students took part in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2015, the average tuition time for science was 144 hours. Only Norway and Italy allocated less time than Ireland.
However, results released a year ago showed Irish students rank 10th out of 39 countries. The results of a different international study showed Irish 15-year-olds were sixth-best at science in the EU, and 13th among 35 developed countries.
Although students here are not grouped according to ability for junior cycle science, the ERC found from international data that these students do slightly better on average than those grouped by ability. However, in most other subject areas, there is little or no difference whether or not there is such streaming.
Nearly 90% of Irish students are streamed for second-level maths, double the average in comparison countries. But the opposite is true for science, where the 7% of Irish second-level students streamed is less than a quarter of the 31% international average.
The ERC research paper Shaping Schools compares Ireland on several measures from the TIMSS study, conducted with children in fourth class of primary as well as second-years.
It points out that Ireland’s education system is unusual for having primary class sizes that are generally larger than those in second-level, as the opposite is the case in most other countries.
Our schools are also generally smaller than elsewhere, with the 303 pupils in the average primary school here being not even half the international average.
The average enrolment of 625 students in Irish second-level schools was just over three-quarters of the 825 of all countries that took part in TIMSS.
ERC researchers Eemer Eivers and Emma Chubb highlight an unusually-high proportion of Irish schools being owned and managed by denominational bodies, usually Catholic bishops or religious orders. This form of private ownership of publicly-funded schools applies to all but 4% of the coutnry’s 3,300 primary schools.
Only 45% of Irish second-level students attend schools managed directly or indirectly by a public education authority, compared to 83.5% across all developed countries.
