Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 24 November 2022
105. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Minister for Education if her attention has been drawn to the recent OECD report titled ‘Education at a Glance’ that ranked Ireland in last place out of 36 OECD countries for investment in secondary education as a percentage of GDP; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [58218/22]
View answerAs the Deputy will be aware, senior academics have raised questions regarding the use of GDP as the most appropriate measure of the size of the Irish economy. My department published a paper on this matter in October of this year to assist users of these statistics to understand this issue (see : gov.ie - OECD Briefing Notes (www.gov.ie)). The paper outlines how the very large increase of 34% in GDP between 2014 and 2015 raised questions about the usefulness of GDP as an accounting standard for Ireland and how this in turn led to the development of GNI*. GNI* is an economic indicator that provides a measure of the size of the Irish economy adjusted to lessen the impact of the globalisation activities that disproportionately affect Irish economic aggregates. GNI has been used instead of GDP in national policy for example, the National Development Plan, 2021-2030.
The paper referenced above outlines how, using the alternative measure of GNI*, education expenditure in 2019 as a percentage of GNI* stood at 5.3%. This is well above the equivalent measure using GDP. It also compares favourably to the OECD average for education expenditure as a percentage of national income, which stood at 4.9 per cent in 2019. The document also looks at Ireland’s spend on education as a percentage of total Government spending and this also compares well internationally.
Since 2019, funding for school level education has increased by around €1.6 billion – 19 per cent.
Input measurement is just one element in examining education systems; other measures, such as indicators that examine the quality of the system, outputs, and outcomes are important in making international comparisons and assessing the performance of Ireland’s schools, and wider education system.
Ireland consistently performs well in International studies such as PISA and PIRLS. For example, as regards literacy and numeracy, Ireland ranked 4th out of 36 OECD countries in literacy and 16th out of 37 OECD countries in mathematics (PISA 2018).
For the transition to adulthood and further/higher education, the enrolment rates (at all levels) among 15-19-year olds in 2020 in Ireland, at 90 per cent, exceed the OECD and EU22 averages and place Ireland seventh. Ireland shares, in common with some other OECD countries, a pronounced pattern of completion of upper-secondary education and commencement of further and higher education around the age of 18.
