Irish fifteen-year-olds outperforming international peers, study shows

Fifteen-year-olds in Ireland perform exceptionally well on the world stage, outperforming international peers, according to a new report.

The Educational Research Centre published the report, which saw the teenagers being assessed across four domains in the Programme for International Student Assessment.

Although students performed exceptionally well in some areas, there have been significant declines in reading and mathematics, the ERC say, which mirrors international downward trends.

When it came to science, Irish students achieved a mean score of 500 points; this was significantly higher than the OECD average of 482 and the EU average of 476.

Irish students also demonstrated a strong sense of digital literacy. In this section, Ireland achieved a mean score of 511 points in computational problem solving, surpassing the EU average of 492.

The downward trends show that only 6.1% of Irish students achieved top-performer status in mathematics, compared to the EU average of 7.8%.

In terms of gender, boys outperformed girls in science, mathematics, and computational problem solving. However, girls outperformed boys in reading by 19 points.

The report also found that second generation immigrant students showed good academic standings. Outperforming non immigrant students in mathematics by 8 points and in computational problem solving by 22 points.

Students in traditional secondary schools outperformed those in ETB or community schools. Students in non-DEIS schools outperformed DEIS students by 30 and 53 points.

To gather these findings, approximately 6,356 Irish students across 172 schools completed the assessment between March and April 2025.