Statement by TUV leader Jim Allister:
“The fact that the much publicised report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which denigrated Northern Ireland students’ literacy and numeracy skills, turns out to have been catastrophically wrong, is highly significant. The report published by the OECD a few days ago ranked students in Northern Ireland 22nd out of 23 countries in literacy and 21st out of 23 in numeracy. They have since had to issue a statement blaming the mistake on “a formatting error” and clarifying that ” Northern Ireland is, in reality, closer to mid-table of the surveyed countries”.
“This raises serious questions as to OECD’s other educational reports upon which Minister O’Dowd has been so keen to rely on and call in aid of his policy approach. In 2012/13 the Minister spent £79,604 on an OECD Review on Evaluation and Assessment Framework – a statistic which I unearthed in answer to an Assembly question last summer.
“O’Dowd has cited the OECD no less than 32 times in the Assembly chamber – often in attempts to dismiss criticism from myself of his anti-selection dogma. On many of those occasions he has presented anyone who would dare to question OECD findings as opposed to the best of research and educational findings. In fact, his most recent comments on the OECD where in response to me on 3rd November last year when he asked me: ” Can you dismiss the OECD experts in education?”
“O’Dowd is unlikely to use that line again in a hurry!
“Now with the OECD severely discredited, the department needs to urgently review its reliance on its various findings.”