How Northern Ireland became the new Finland
Emphasise skills instead of content: With the introduction of the new primary curriculum in 2007, Northern Irish primary teachers now focus on the skills they want children to attain rather than covering set content. There is more flexibility for teachers and more child-led learning. There is also a huge cohort of assistant teachers and SNAs across the system
Distribute leadership: Teachers in Northern Ireland who take on extra roles in areas such as assessment or special education are still paid extra, unlike in the Republic where increments for Special Posts of Responsibility have been scrapped. “This is a huge deficit for the South,” says Mario Gribbon. “My school has 18 teachers and five of them have paid management roles, such as co-ordinating Key Stage 1 or special education needs. We have school leadership teams. I couldn’t do it all.”
Foster a culture of self-evaluation: Schools are encouraged to constantly scrutinise the results of their own practice and to share best practice with other schools. The Every School a Good School initiative includes an online TV channel where schools can broadcast success stories for other schools to learn from.
Encourage professional development: Schools can assign teacher tutors from within the staff to support struggling teachers. However, despite this, Minister for Education John O’Dowd says that the issue of underperformance is “raised constantly” by boards of governors and that progress in the area is happening too slowly in many cases.
Invest in ICT: Since 2000, the Department of Education in Northern Ireland (DENI) has invested over £470 million (€668m) in ICT infrastructure in schools through the C2k programme. Every grant-aided school across Northern Ireland has a modern, connected ICT infrastructure, with a common email system for all teachers. C2k’s new education technology contract was launched last year and promises Europe’s first education cloud for schools, including a new e-learning platform, Fronter.
Global numeracy rankings 2011
1 Singapore
2 South Korea
3 Hong Kong
4 Chinese Taipei
5 Japan
6 Northern Ireland
7 Belgium (Flemish)
8 Finland
9 England
10 Russian Fdtn
11 United States
12 Netherlands
13 Denmark
14 Lithuania
15 Portugal
16 Germany
17 Republic of Ireland
18 Serbia
19 Australia
20 Hungary
Global literacy rankings 2011
1 Hong Kong SAR
2 Russian Federation
3 Finland
4 Singapore
5 Northern Ireland 6 United States
7 Denmark
8 Croatia
9 Chinese Taipei
10 Republic of Ireland
11 England
12 Canada
13 Netherlands
14 Czech Republic
15 Sweden
16 Italy
17 Germany
18 Israel
19 Portugal
20 Hungary
