Vol. 512 No. 1
60 Mr. Finucane asked the Minister for Education and Science the steps, if any, he will take to implement a literacy initiative with routine literacy testing at three distinct stages in primary education which would be the basis for benchmarking and comparative analysis of performance naturally and locally and the basis for the design of improvement strategies. [25214/99]
Since 1972 my Department has conducted a series of national reading surveys. The most recent of these surveys in 1993 and in 1998 focused on the reading achievements of pupils in fifth class. A national survey of the mathematics achievements of pupils in fourth class was conducted in May of this year and the data are being processed at present.
It is my intention that national surveys should be more frequent and closely linked with international surveys thereby providing more timely and meaningful comparison which will be a real, benefit to all engaged in education.
The vast majority of primary schools already engage in annual assessments of the reading and mathematics attainments of their pupils at the different class levels from first to sixth. This enables schools to monitor their pupils' performance and report to parents on their children's progress. Schools can also compare their performance against the national norms of standardised tests. The results of these tests are made available to inspectors on their visits to schools. Results are not used to compare schools at local level. Such comparisons would be meaningless because of the different composition of pupil enrolment in different schools.
