The Problem
Ireland has slipped from 5th to 17th place in the world rankings of school systems, a quarter of our teenagers are functionally illiterate and multinational CEOs complain of grade inflation from our third level sector. All this despite education spending increasing by 60% in real terms over the decade prior to the bust.
Old Politics Failure
Politicians have thrown good money after bad into our education sector without tackling the systemic issues that are leading to our decline in results. There has been far more reports into our broken education system than tangible action to fix it. Meanwhile generations are being sent into a competitive economy without the skills they need.
Now politicians talk about a smart economy while cutting teacher numbers. It’s an odd method of achieving that policy goal.
The Solution
Aaron’s plan is to look ahead of us at the countries doing better and adopt the best elements of their systems into the way we teach classes and operate our education system. Finland spends less per pupil at primary and secondary school level than we do, yet they are ranked 2nd in the world behind only South Korea. Money isn’t at the heart of our education problem. We need to change the way we run our classrooms.
Smart Policies for a Smart Economy
- Overhaul our education system by trialling the best methods of the best countries in our classrooms, not in committee reports
- Adopt dynamic teacher led learning in classrooms, abandoning rote learning in favour of continuous assessment
- Increase teacher standards with more and targeted continuous learning
- Improve courses and clamp down on grade inflation at third level with more dynamic course accreditation and standards monitoring