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THE FINDINGS OF a new report signalled good progress in Irish education with our 15-year-olds performing above average across the board in maths, reading and science.
The latest OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report for 2012, published today, found significant improvements in all areas compared to the last results in 2009 when Ireland dropped from fifth place to 17th in literacy.
Ireland is now ranked ninth our of 34 countries in science, fourth in reading and 13th in maths. While we are well above average in some areas, there has been a drop in the average scores across other countries between 2009 and 2012 and this has contributed to our more favourable position.
‘Not in the top league’
We may have recovered from 2009, when there was an unexpected drop in both reading and maths, but the Department of Education itself pointed out today that scores in these areas have remained relatively unchanged since Ireland first participated in the OECD report.
The PISA report also indicates, that the education system still needs to promote reading among boys and mathematics among girls.
Speaking at Government Buildings today, Minister for Education welcomed the improvement but stressed that we are “not in the top league, and that’s where we need to go”.
“The initial teacher education, which is for both primary and secondary is now being transformed and the fruits of that will begin to manifest over the next three to four years,” he said.
Quinn also said the reform of the junior cycle in secondary schools will “address a number of the issues”.
Deep and damaging cuts
Commenting on the findings of the report, General Secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, John MacGabhann, said they endorse the “very high levels of quality in the Irish education system in spite of deep and damaging cuts in teacher numbers and attacks on programmes that help the most vulnerable students.”
The scores represent significant achievements by students and teachers and are a tribute to their resilience at a time when the austerity agenda has sidelined the irrefutable, clear case for progressive and appropriate investment in education.
The TUI also endorsed the report’s recommendation that children from disadvantaged backgrounds be targeted with additional resources or economic assistance.
“It is vital that the government fully embrace this principle in order to give every student a fair chance,” MacGabhann added.
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That’s the problem with todays media reporting of live events, they are all so busy trying to get one up on the other channels that they don’t think for a minute about what they are saying. Imagine hiding out from some langer trying to kill you only for some idiot reporter to come on air and say “oh by the way there’s 4 hostages hiding out in the cold room”!
If you can get your hands on “the human face of big data”, there’s an interesting piece on how terrorists use data and how in more prolific hostage taking countries it’s now quite common for live selected killings to take place using human search engines and media outlets for info. Or even waiting to carry out an attack to see who is in their area. Next gen terrorism. Off point but interesting.
Its not just a modern thing – during a ground stand-off following an aircraft hijacking (in the 1970′s I think) special forces had approached the plane via a blind spot to launch a surprise raid on the hijackers. Unfortunately events were being broadcast on live radio and the hijackers were listening in and knew exactly what was about to happen, with disastrous results.
Amen.
What Globalist Murdoch said about the Sydney Siege comes to mind.
Bloodthirsty vampire.
http://www.thejournal.ie/murdoch-tweet-sydney-1836603-Dec2014/
Good move. Hopefully the media will cop on a bit more. If some aren’t making it up they are getting it all wrong.
Fox News springs to mind!
About time the tv media were taken to task, imagine if that lunatic had been watching the live stream and did go down to the chiller they were hiding in…unthinkable acts would have ensued.
In this day and age you would think tv news channels would have more cop on…but I suppose being more and more sensationalist is worth more than a life in this day and age. How many more lives would have been saved that day if that sick man was not put under the spotlight?
Its sad really that there is an appetite for this sensationalism.
Apparently the gunman was watching but must have missed that report. The cop is to blame here as well as he shouldn’t have told the media anything in the first place. With today’s communications it would be easy for any gunman to have someone else watching TV, twitter etc and keeping them informed of what was going on. Best keep the media away from they area and in the dark until it’s all over.
I wonder if that journalist would have been so eager to broadcast that information if one of his own relatives was hiding in that freezer?…..I think not…….which just goes to show how little empathy some journalists have with other people in deadly situations.
I wonder what nationality and religion the editor / producer : journalist are?
It’s like that film Night Crawler. Ratings are worth more to these stations than human lives. Check it out. Jake Gyllenhaal is great in it.
I was thinking more about the reporter from Die Hard and Die Hard 2.
Yes. Just what I was thinking. Great movie.
Some of these”repoters” are sociopaths.
Look at the way they vilify Israel for its conduct in the war against Hamas terror,though experts in this field attest that Israel took the most extraordinary efforts to keep civilian casualties at a minimum while Hamas used its own people as shields in some cases. But vilifying Israel feeds the Jew-hatred and sells so ‘to hell with the facts go for what sells’.
See excerpt from Colonel Kemp’s report
–Three days ago I spoke to an Israeli pilot that told me that the same morning he had aborted an enemy target a total of 17 times because there were civilians in the target zone, and eventually he abandoned the operation. I asked him, was that not frustrating? His answer was simply no. And that to me, is one of the best things about the IAF – that the last very thing they want to do is bomb a target and have that on their conscience for the rest of their lives. And it was the same thing with infantry soldiers. I spoke to soldiers who have been fighting in Gaza, and several of them said to me: ‘We know what the rules of engagement are but even without them, it is always on our minds that we cannot kill civilians.’ See for them, this has nothing to do with orders, it’s just always there at the forefront. We’re talking about [reservists who are] simply artists, metal-workers, musicians, they are not killers. They have absolutely no desire to kill civilians. In fact, in terms of civilian casualties, the attitude of IDF solders is the exact mirror image of the way they’re portrayed to the world.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/30/col-richard-kemp-israeli-pilot-aborted-gaza-strike-17-times-to-protect-civilians-jewish-people-should-be-proud-of-the-state-of-israel-interview/
Happy Easter All!
Truly and accurately stated. You’ll get red thumbs galore, no doubt, Patrick, but that just goes to show that many people don’t like the truth messing up their paradigm.
@Elias Khoury! Thanks for Elias’ sentiment. Your prediction was so but not so bad and some of them even red-thumbed Elias to spite me.Laughable isn’t it!
I worry not but to speak the truth as I see it. People have a very healthy scepticism about the newsmedia here and it’s just a matter of time before they cotton-on to the con-job the Hamas/PLO and other Jihadders have pulled on them via the self-seeking media.
Additionally, Jew-hatred is on the wane however imperceptible it seems.
Happy Easter…
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