Primary School:

Infants to 6th Class

Kids start Junior Infants class when they are 4 or 5 years old. Junior Infants also goes by the endearing name of "Babies." There is much more desk work and much less diversion than in comparable American grades (Nursery school and Kindergarten). Junior Infants is followed by Senior Infants, and then first through 6th class. The education received is very sound, very solid, and very traditional. There isn't much emphasis on hands-on learning. Whole language reading and science is only a very small part of the primary school curriculum.

Computers

Computers? Ha! Gradually, government grants and parent fund raisers are increasing the number. Every school in the country now has a broadband internet connection. The ratio of working computers to students is falling all the time, but it's only in high school that your youngsters are likely to receive significant instruction and time on a computer.

Quality of Education

Despite this, or more likely because of this, students come out of 6th class much more grounded in basic skills than those I dealt with in America. All students can write a credible essay, read, and perform basic math operations. This is more than I can state about some of the students graduating from American primary schools where I was a teacher.

There is a qualifier. I had a several hour talk with a despairing primary teacher. He teaches 7 year olds in one of the most deprived neighbourhoods of North Dublin. So far as he knows, in his twenty years of teaching not one child from his school ever graduated college. In the past few years it has become standard to push kids through onto the next level class whether they have mastered the necessary skills or no. In other words, the same rot that afflicts just about every American primary school is now affecting the poorest neighbourhoods in Dublin.

Its not that desperate poverty is now driving this process. Quite the opposite, in fact. For the first time ever, the mothers and dads in these troubled housing estates are all working. And, never having valued education themselves, the parents fail to instill any appreciation of the benefits in their kids. It's a modern complexity common in many prosperous nations. The latch-key child has become much more common in Ireland since the 1990's and when the adults are home they're not hooshing the kids along.

I have friends and family who are teachers or former students in many parts of Ireland. Outside of these city, welfare driven housing estates I have not heard of similar problems.

For more information check out the Full Site.