The very first requirement demanded of my students is phones and laptops off, put away, allowing them to concentrate for the full hour. Students are constantly online, distracted and, as a result, not focused. For example, not so long ago, I was asked to give a series of lectures in Spain’s highest-rated postgraduate business school. I faced an entire class of students on their phones and online as I tried to teach them macroeconomics, which can be tricky, technical, counterintuitive and intellectually difficult. It doesn’t work. Either students are in class, attentive and alert, or there is no point.
Learning also takes time. Patience is essential and so too is some form of the relentless repetition that is regularly dismissed as rote learning, but is actually the process of figuring something out. Constant distraction rarely allows the penny to drop.
The Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) results for educational achievement, published last week and revealing falls across the board in developed countries, don’t reassure those of us who see education and learning not just as the cornerstone of a vibrant economy, but the foundational block of a civilised society.
In terms of economics, a study into school performance and future economic growth found that differences in cognitive skills lead to significant differences in economic growth. An extra 100 points on Pisa scores is associated with approximately two percentage points higher annual growth in per capita GDP. A good example of this is Poland, where Pisa scores increased by 25 points between 2002 and 2012, correlating (but obviously not the only contributing factor) with its huge economic growth once those students entered the workforce. The exemplar in this area is Ireland, where significant increases in the early 2000s in Pisa scores contributed to driving the economy forward in subsequent decades.
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However, apart from productivity arguments, more education creates better societies, with less crime, better behaved neighbours, less casual violence, a commitment to the pursuit of art and culture and generally a higher quality of life, allied to a higher standard of living, which is why the latest Pisa scores are a bit unsettling.
Measured every three years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) tests 15-year-olds across dozens of countries in maths, reading and science. The 2025 results confirmed that the post-pandemic collapse in scores has not reversed, it has deepened. Scores peaked around 2012 and have fallen steadily since. Today, 15-year-olds are testing at levels a 14-year-old might have hit a decade ago. In addition, those falling behind are falling behind faster. Twenty per cent of 15-year-olds across the developed world are now “low performers” in all three of reading, maths and science, up from 16 per cent just four years ago.
The results for Ireland are a mixed bag. We tested just over 6,000 students across 172 schools between March and April 2025. Ireland’s scores have declined across the board in the past decade. The class of 2015 was smarter than the class of 2025. In reading, we declined from 521 to 500 – a drop of 21 points. In maths, the drop was from 504 to 480 (down 24 points), while science stayed the same at 503 points. On the upside, Irish declines were smaller than the OECD-wide average drop in reading but a bit higher in maths. (Average was 28 points in reading, 22 in maths across the OECD.) Relative to other countries Ireland is still comfortably ahead of the OECD average. However Ireland’s share of top-performing maths students (6.1 per cent) has slipped below the OECD average (7.8 per cent). So we have fewer high-fliers even as the middle holds up reasonably well. Worryingly, 17 per cent of Irish 15-year-olds now struggle with reading (up from 11 per cent in 2022), 24 per cent struggle with maths (up from 19 per cent). Boys are behind girls in reading and girls behind boys in maths.
By our own high standards things are slipping. Why might this be?
We are getting dumber because those screen hostages can’t concentrate. Like my university students, teenagers have, in many cases, lost the ability to switch off and knuckle down. In extreme cases, it is now reported that some kids under 18 don’t use keyboards on their phone any more, they only use text-to-speech, not only because it is far quicker, but because they find reading a hassle. So phones, screen and scrolling are all having their impact on concentration and reading ability. Patient reading has been replaced with a concept called hurried reading: a type of time-saving skim-reading in which the reader digests only a fraction of the message, the “essential”, but loses the contemplative moment that leads to deep learning. Reading for pleasure is disappearing. Children’s Books Ireland’s 2025 report on young people’s reading habits found 24 per cent of 13-18-year-olds don’t read for pleasure at all, and average book ownership per child fell from 30 books in 2023 to just 20 in 2025, a startling one-third drop in two years.
Not all the education problems are technology-related. In Ireland, there are old-fashioned structural problems like what used to be called “mitching”. In 2023/24, 22 per cent of primary pupils missed more than 20 school days. Poor children, rather than rich or middle class ones, tend to be the ones missing more school, helping to generate the gap between top and bottom performers.
Three-quarter of schools that have advertised for teachers in the past year have positions that remain unfilled. Commuting, the prices of houses and the relatively low salaries for first-time teachers, as well as better opportunities overseas, mean that Ireland is maybe for the first time since independence suffering from not enough teachers. This is clearly affecting performance, but so too might be the move away from rigorous testing towards softer methods, like continuous assessment. After all, swotting never hurt anyone. Treating students like snowflakes, constantly protecting them, rendering them unable to deal with failure and setbacks might also be having a deleterious impact. Grit is a virtue.
Ireland’s education standards are slipping but from a very strong base, so the situation is concerning rather than critical. One caveat is worth considering: maybe we are all getting more stupid or, at least, less intelligent. Some researchers have argued that there is a natural ceiling to intelligence in the way there is a natural ceiling to athletic achievement. For years in Ireland, people who didn’t have the chance of education before experienced huge increases in IQ, propelled by better nutrition, housing and, of course, schooling. But once we become rich, does this upward momentum plateau off – particularly for the middle classes? There is a ceiling to how fast a human can actually run – Usain Bolt’s record may be beaten, but not by much. Similarly, constantly increasing Pisa scores from here might be improbable. The bourgeois ceiling has been hit. From here, future major gains might only come from raising the floor, improving the chances of poor children.
