New data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows Ireland is trailing behind its international counterparts when it comes to key areas of education spending and investment, according to the country’s three main teaching unions.
The claims follow the publication on Tuesday of the OECD’s latest Education at a Glance report. The report is a wide-ranging collection of data from more than 50 European Union and international economies that deals with all levels of education from preschool to third level.
The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) and Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) pointed to evidence of Ireland’s higher teacher/pupil ratios at primary and third level respectively, contained in the report.
In the case of primary schools, the INTO says the Department of Education’s own figures suggest class sizes in Ireland were significantly above the EU average of 19 and, at 22.2, also above the OECD figure of 21.
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“The programme for government commits to class sizes of 19,” the union said in a statement following the report’s publication. “Achieving this target will require a reduction in the schedule of at least four pupils per teacher.”
It said the Government should take action to start making those reductions in the forthcoming budget.
The TUI highlighted a similar issue at third level, pointing to statistics in the report that indicate Ireland’s ratio of 19 students per member of teaching staff as “far above” the OECD average of 15 to one.
“A generation of students is losing out as a result and an era of underfunding is also adding significantly to the workload of academic staff,” it said.
The report finds Ireland’s respective spends on primary, secondary and tertiary (third level) education in 2022 all to be significantly below EU and OECD averages when taken as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP), something highlighted by the all three unions.
Pointing to the figures for second level, the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) notes that investment here is reported to be 0.8 per cent of GDP, compared with OECD and EU averages of 1.7 per cent.
“Clearly Ireland is failing to prioritise education in the way that it can and should,” said the union’s general secretary Kieran Christie. ”Children and young people deserve better than this.”
Gaps of a similar scale are highlighted in the report at primary and third levels although the report authors have previously noted that the Irish GDP figure is not entirely comparable to that of other nations because of the distorting impact of a small number of multinationals.
The more than 500-page report contains data in a huge range of educational areas and Ireland shows positive outcomes in many areas. For instance, there has been a substantial increase in the number of people achieving master’s-level qualifications between 2019 and 2024. There are also high levels of degree-level qualifications by children of parents, neither of whom completed the Leaving Certificate.
The report suggests the starting salaries, and pay after 10 years for teachers in Ireland are, when adjusted for local spending power, both below the OECD averages. The TUI said the scale of the issue is actually underestimated because of the length of time it is taking many to secure full-time, permanent jobs. The union’s president, Anthony Quinn, described the situation as “shameful”.
The impact of the increments system in Ireland is also highlighted in the report however. It shows that after gaps in starting salaries narrow over the first 10 years, Irish teachers earn about 10 per cent more than the international average at second level and 15 per cent more at primary level after 15 years.
A Department of Education spokesperson said “comparing Ireland’s education spend against GDP is misleading and inappropriate because it does not take into account the large presence of multinationals based in Ireland.”
The spokesperson said that when “more appropriate measures such as G-N-I-Star (Modified Gross National Income), Ireland’s expenditure in education ranks favourably.”
They said the 2025 education budget is €12.2 billion. “Since 2020, funding for school-level education has increased by circa €3.5 billion or 40 per cent."
“When you look at other measures, such education spend versus other public spending, again we compare favourably, and spending per pupil Ireland ranks 9th out 27 in Europe for expenditure per pupil in post-primary for the last 10 years”, the spokesperson said.
