Irlande

During the last decade, several OECD countries have been supporting citizen engagement in policy making to better respond to increasingly volatile environments and complex problems. Ireland has a strong tradition and culture of partnership models and stakeholder engagement in education policy making. However, a desire to explore new opportunities for school community engagement and how they could support existing national consultation processes contributed to the exploration of alternative forms of stakeholder engagement in education. This has prompted the Teaching Council in collaboration with a range of Government Departments and national stakeholders, to request assistance from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) for the project 'Support to improve local community engagement in Ireland’s education policy development'. Drawing from international examples, existing stakeholder engagement practices in Ireland, the contributions of a wide range of education stakeholders and a pilot exercise, this report proposes a model and roadmap for exploring the potential of school community engagement to further support policy making across the Irish education system.

During the COVID 19 pandemic, countries around the world faced the challenge of how to certify student learning at the end of schooling, when in-person examinations were no longer possible. In 2020 and 2021, Ireland developed emergency measures to replace the country’s historic Senior Cycle examinations, or Leaving Certificate. The global health situation, school closures and the challenges to continue teaching and learning in this context made it a particularly difficult time for students, teachers, school leaders, families and policy makers. Ireland’s emergency solutions – the Calculated Grades System in 2020 and the Accredited Grades System in 2021 – provided recognised certification of student achievement and enabled Ireland’s young people to progress to the next stage of life, into further education or employment. This policy perspective reflects on the experience for stakeholders of the solutions that were adopted in 2020 and 2021.

Irish authorities are reshaping the nation’s higher education landscape, creating a network of technological universities that merge, build on, and extend the mission of the country’s institutes of technology. Its emerging technological universities are tasked with providing research-informed teaching and learning across all levels of higher education, linking their programmes to the needs of their region’s citizens, businesses and professions. This paper was commissioned by Ireland’s Higher Education Authority and Department for Further and Higher Education, Research and Innovation, who asked the OECD to identify a set of benchmark higher education institutions from other OECD countries that can provide insights for the development of future Irish technological universities through examination of their human resource policies, career paths and organisational structures. Drawing upon this evidence, and analysis of current policies in Ireland’s institutes of technology and technological universities, this analysis identifies options for new career and employment contracts and organisation structures

This policy brief is the third in a series of thematic policy briefs in the OECD's Resourcing Higher Education Project. This wider project aims to provide a shared knowledge base for OECD member and partner countries on policy for higher education resourcing, drawing on system-specific and comparative policy analysis. The policy brief for Ireland addresses a series of specific questions about the funding of higher education institutions, formulated by Ireland’s Higher Education Authority (HEA). The brief first reviews the main factors that affect the cost of delivery in higher education (cost drivers) and the extent to which OECD jurisdictions monitor costs and use cost information to inform the design and implementation of their funding systems. It then provides an analysis of the ways in which OECD jurisdictions design models for allocating public funding to higher education institutions to promote social inclusion objectives, reward institutional performance and provide targeted resourcing for national priorities, such as increasing supply of high-demand skills.

L'apprentissage, le développement et le bien-être des enfants sont directement influencés par leurs interactions quotidiennes avec les autres enfants, les adultes, leur famille et l'environnement. Ce processus interactif est connu sous le nom de « qualité du processus » et conduit à une question clé: quelles politiques établissent les meilleures conditions pour que les enfants vivent des interactions de haute qualité dans les établissements d'éducation et d'accueil de la petite enfance (EAJE) ? Ce rapport examine cinq principaux leviers politiques et leur effet sur la qualité des processus, en se concentrant particulièrement sur les programmes et la pédagogie, et le développement de la main-d'œuvre. Il présente des indicateurs couvrant 26 pays et juridictions, 56 cadres curriculaires différents et plus de 120 types différents d'établissements d'EAJE.

In supporting children’s development, countries invest in the future successes of economies and societies. Awareness of the critical role early childhood education and care (ECEC) plays in setting a strong foundation for children’s learning, development and well-being has grown among policy makers worldwide. The OECD Quality beyond Regulations policy review provides countries with an overview of the different dimensions of quality in ECEC. It also highlights policies that can enhance process quality in particular. From this review, emerged the present report, taking an in-depth look at Ireland's ECEC system. It outlines the sector’s main strengths and challenges, focusing on workforce development and quality assurance through monitoring and inspections. The report provides tailored policy recommendations to improve provision in line with national goals.

This report offers an initial overview of the available information regarding the circumstances, nature and outcomes of the education of schoolchildren during the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns of March-April 2020. Its purpose is primarily descriptive: it presents information from high quality quantitative studies on the experience of learning during this period in order to ground the examination and discussion of these issues in empirical examples. Information is presented on three interrelated topics: the nature of the educational experience during the period of lockdowns and school closures; the home environment in which education took place for the vast majority of schoolchildren; the effects on the mental health and learning outcomes for children during this period. The data come primarily from 5 countries (France, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States) with additional information on some aspects for 6 additional countries (Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Canada, Finland, Italy and the Netherlands). This report will be of interest to policy makers, academics, education stakeholders and anyone interested in a first international empirical analysis of the effects of the pandemic on the lives and education of schoolchildren.

Ireland is undertaking a review of their senior cycle (upper secondary education) led by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). It aims at collecting the views of all relevant stakeholders to identify the strengths and challenges of senior cycle in its current form, and identify priority issues and actions to move forward. As part of OECD’s implementing education policies project, an OECD team was invited to support the review of Ireland’s senior cycle. The team has carried out the assessment presented here and provided strategic advice based on four analytical aspects: smart policy design, inclusive stakeholder engagement, conducive context and a coherent implementation strategy. Each one of these dimensions matters to ensure that the review of senior cycle can move forward based on evidence and with strong support from stakeholders.

This country policy profile on education in Ireland is part of the Education Policy Outlook series. Building on the first policy profile for Ireland (2013), it offers a concise analysis of where the education system stands today in terms of strengths, challenges and ongoing policy efforts, and how this compares to other systems. The profile brings together over a decade’s worth of policy analysis by the Education Policy Outlook, as well as the latest OECD data, relevant thematic and country-specific work and other international and national evidence. It also offers analysis of the Irish education system’s initial responses to the COVID-19 crisis and provides insight into approaches to building greater responsiveness and resilience for the future.

La révolution technologique qui a marqué les dernières décennies du XXe siècle a entraîné une forte augmentation de la demande de facultés de traitement de l’information et d’autres compétences cognitives et interpersonnelles sur le marché du travail. Sur la base des résultats des 33 pays et régions ayant participé aux deux premières vagues de l'Enquête sur les compétences des adultes en 2011-12 et 2014-15, ce rapport décrit les compétences dans trois domaines de traitement de l'information et examine comment les compétences sont liées au marché du travail et aux résultats sociaux. Il décrit notamment les résultats des six pays ayant participé à la troisième vague du premier cycle du PIAAC en 2017-18 (Équateur, États-Unis, Hongrie, Kazakhstan, Mexique et Pérou). L’Évaluation des compétences des adultes, un produit du Programme de l’OCDE pour l’évaluation internationale des compétences des adultes (PIAAC), a été conçue pour montrer dans quelle mesure les individus possèdent certaines de ces facultés et compétences clés et comment ils les utilisent dans le cadre professionnel et dans la vie privée. Cette enquête, la première du genre, évalue directement le niveau de compétence dans trois domaines du traitement de l’information : la littératie, la numératie et la résolution de problèmes.