Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 23 January 2024
314. Deputy Patrick Costello asked the Minister for Education to provide, in tabular form, a list of the 170 second level education institutions in Ireland whose students were assessed in the PISA 2022 survey, indicating the school roll number in each case; and to provide lists of the second level education institutions whose students were assessed in the PISA 2018, PISA 2015, PISA 2012, PISA 2009 and PISA 2006 surveys. [3073/24]
View answerPISA is designed to give large scale population level results and is not designed to assess individual student or school performance. Each school that takes part in PISA receives their own feedback from the Educational Research Centre which shows their own results in comparison to the national study but no school has access to another school’s results.
It would not be appropriate to disclose a list of schools who undertake the PISA study. Schools undertake the study on the understanding that their participation is confidential and that they are part of an international study where the large scale data rather than school level data is what is being looked at. In addition, a disclosure of a detailed breakdown of these schools could lead to the compilation of league tables. Section 53 of the Education Act, 1998, allows for the refusal of access to data, which could enable league tables on the comparative performance of students or schools to be determined. I am opposed to the publication of such tables as they provide an unbalanced and very limited indication of a school's performance.
