Ireland’s extraordinary education revolution laid bare by two new reports

Over 75 per cent of ambitious poorer kids finish college as opposed to 70 per cent of their richer (and lazier?) counterparts

This week two global reports underscored the extraordinary education revolution that has taken place in Ireland. We are now the most educated country on the planet, above Singapore and Switzerland with 54 per cent of us holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to Visual Capitalist – a phenomenal achievement and one that should be celebrated.

But another report on Ireland’s educational performance, also published this week, might be even more consequential. The OECD released fascinating research about who is doing well in universities across the globe. Traditionally, it is assumed that students from well-to-do families – even lazy ones – do better and are more likely to finish college than those from poorer backgrounds.

The idea hinges on what is called “kitchen table capital”, meaning the conversations, role models, networks and aspirations that middle-class children observe while growing up. These factors mean that – around the world – even work-shy rich kids are more likely than their poorer counterparts to finish university. Depressingly, environment matters more than effort.

In most countries, poorer students are more likely to drop out, take a job and do what their mates are doing, going to work and earning money, rather than persevering with education. Many don’t see the point in foregoing cash today for potentially more cash – and status – tomorrow. In contrast, wealthier children, who can afford to forego working today and look forward to a more lucrative future, often remain on the parental “payroll”.

An interesting way to look at relative opportunity is through this prism of time frames. Middle-class people have longer time frames. Poorer people, worried about paying the bills today, have shorter time frames. They can’t afford to plan because poverty obliterates the future. Getting through today is more urgent than thinking about tomorrow or next year. The result of this is that the class system persists. Students from less well off families are more likely to drop out as they can’t fall back on family money to tide them over for those critical early-20s years.

This notion makes so much practical or common sense that it is assumed to be a fact, yet the latest comparative data suggests reasons for optimism, in Ireland at least. The OECD claims that – in contrast to the norm all over the world – Irish students from working-class backgrounds are doing well. More than 75 per cent of poorer students finish college, compared with 70 per cent of their richer counterparts. Meanwhile, in the US, 87 per cent of rich kids finish college, while only 70 per cent of students from poor backgrounds matriculate. After the Netherlands, Ireland is the country in Europe where most poor students who get into university complete their courses.

This is good news because education is the fastest and most dependable avenue out of poverty. It has ever been thus. The “where would you be without your education?” quip from generations of Irish mammies is accurate. Countries that invest in mass education, no matter how many anomalies and inefficiencies in the system, are rewarded with upward social mobility. The historic role of education in allowing millions of Irish people to live better lives is unambiguous, even if current economic realities are making that harder. The corollary is also the case. Countries and regimes that attack the education system, such as the Trump administration, will be punished with more, not less, “left-behinds” in years to come. Given that the “left-behinds” are a critical Maga constituency, the de-education of America might well be a cynical electoral strategy.

For all its faults – and the Leaving Cert is obviously problematic – Ireland ranks fourth globally among OECD countries for college education attainment among 25-34 year olds at 63.4 per cent. This represents a dramatic transformation – a 33-percentage-point increase from just 30 per cent in 2000 – and nearly a doubling of the OECD average growth rate .

Ireland also holds the second-highest third-level attainment rate in the EU 27 for the 30-34 age cohort and has one of the lowest early school-leaving rates across Europe. The comparison with Northern Ireland, which has a serious education attainment problem, is quite shocking. Comparing the North and the South is like a social laboratory test: same island, same people, different priorities, contrasting results. In education, the Irish State tries much harder. While many complain that we have far too many graduates at the expense of tradespeople, we should not forget the main point: education is the best way out of poverty. Education today is an investment in tomorrow.

We can regard the surge in third-level education in this country as the second part of an intergenerational process which was kicked off with free second-level education in 1967. The ensuing transformation of the Irish class system is likely to be repeated again, this time through the prism of college education. While it is not yet clear who will benefit most from mass third-level education, previous generations offer a blueprint.

The greatest beneficiaries of the introduction of free second-level education were not the urban working classes, but the descendants of smallholding farmers from the remote reaches of the country. In 1950, after 30 years of independence, Ireland was more dependent on agriculture than it had been in 1870. But the small farmers – or, more accurately, their rural Irish mammies – saw this dead-end coming and concluded that the only way out for the children who didn’t get the farm was either emigration or the public service. A wonderful piece of research by two UCG sociologists, Damien Hannan & Patrick Commins, found that the single most important determinant of a county’s educational achievement in the 1960s and 1970s was the number of small farmers. The more small farmers in a county, the better educated the children (boys and girls) and the better they did in their Leaving Cert. They even found that the single most successful subsection of the Irish population was the children of small farmers in east Galway. Compared to their urban, working-class counterparts, 30 per cent more children of small farmers did the Leaving Cert than working-class Dubs and 50 per cent more went on to third-level education.

The authors concluded: “Not only have the smallholders succeeded in retaining their property and relative income position, but they have also succeeded in capturing a significant proportion of local off-farm employment. They have been more effective than working-class families in utilising the education system to gain access to off-farm opportunities for their children.”

The sons and daughters of small farmers became the new middle classes – the “CAO Class” – of the Celtic Tiger era and now their kids constitute Ireland’s professional class, moving on socially from where their parents left off, much richer and more educated than their grandparents could have ever imagined. This upward mobility is why the latest OECD data on Irish college dropout rates is so encouraging. Of course, it is only one data point and should not be overstated but, if this becomes a trend, a new social class might be emerging from poorer urban areas of Ireland.

Such guarded optimism flies in the face of the relentless negativity about the “left-behinds” and the “atrophying” of Ireland’s social fabric. Being among the best-educated populations in the world, and having more poor kids – once they get to college – graduating, can only benefit the country in the years ahead. An educated country is a more equal country. No one can deny the persisting class-based bias in our elite universities, but Ireland is going in the right direction. University access schemes such as HEAR (Higher Education Access Route), which offers places for those with fewer Leaving Cert points and extra support for high-ability students from deprived backgrounds, are essential and should be expanded.

It takes time, but every poor kid who finishes college is a role model for others and society makes progress one mortar board at a time. That’s what social mobility looks like. Let’s frame it.