This release is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example, new administrative data sources.
The Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) Starting Strong is an international, large-scale survey of staff and managers in early learning and care (ELC). TALIS Starting Strong is conducted under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Ireland was one of 15 countries that participated in the 2024 round of the survey. It is undertaken in Ireland by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The Department of Children, Disability & Equality (DCDE) is the sponsoring Department.
The TALIS Starting Strong survey gathered data on two age groups of children:
The survey focuses on ELC staff and leaders, their professional development, their work with young children, the ELC environment, their job satisfaction, wellbeing and the impact that staff can have on the children in their care.
Administrative data formed the sample frame for the survey. The sampling plan prepared for TALIS Starting Strong was a stratified two-stage probability sampling design. In the first stage, a random sample of ELC Settings was selected, while in the second stage, ELC staff were randomly selected from a list of in-scope staff for each selected setting. For each sampled setting, two replacements settings were also selected.
Each setting was selected for participation in only one age group (pre-primary or children under the age of 3). Settings that served both age groups were split randomly between the two samples. Setting participation rates are listed in Table 1.
A “participating ELC setting” is one where at least 33% of the selected setting staff participated. If a sampled setting did not have a 33% response rate it was not adjudicated to have participated as the response rate was too low. Table 2 shows staff participation rates for Ireland.
For both age groups of ELC settings, replacement settings were contacted before the participation of the originally sampled setting was defined. Consequently, replacements participated although the original setting participated as well. These replacements were moved into separate strata and were treated as self-representing. They do not contribute to participation rates.
Home-based settings were excluded from the sample for settings for children under age 3. The exclusion rate remained below 5% of staff.
TALIS Starting Strong 2024 was a web-based survey facilitated by postal, email and telephone promotional campaigns as well as direct field engagement from interviewers. The main data collection for TALIS Starting Strong in Ireland took place between February and May 2024.
As part of the quality control strategy implemented during the survey, an independent international quality observer monitored adherence to survey procedures, reviewed co-ordinator manuals, and conducted interviews with ELC setting co-ordinators.
The TALIS Starting strong survey used three types of questionnaires:
Managers/deputy managers were defined as the persons with the most responsibility for the administrative, managerial and/or pedagogical leadership at the ELC setting.
Staff - early years lead educator/early years educator - are defined as all persons regularly carrying out pedagogical work, providing learning opportunities or care, with children of pre-primary (ISCED02) settings and/or settings for children under the age of three years.
The data collected in the TALIS Starting Strong survey was weighted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Education Achievement (IEA) on behalf of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The OECD carried out an adjudication process on the TALIS Starting Strong data (from all countries) to ascertain whether the data released were “fit for use” as intended. The rating was, in the main, dictated by the response rate but did take into account a non-response bias analysis that was completed on the data. Ireland’s data (amongst other countries) was rated as insufficient in both TALIS Starting Strong modules (ISCED Level 02 and Under 3). The adjudication rules applied to the manager data can be seen in Table 3 and adjudication rules for the staff data can be seen in Table 4.
Of the eight countries included in the TALIS Starting Strong survey, for the settings for children under age 3, the data of six countries were adjudicated to be insufficient, one poor and one good. Some of these countries reached stronger levels of response (above 50%) after the inclusion of replacement ELC settings in the sample. The OECD plan to include all countries in their international report in full with denotation on those countries that were rated as insufficient.
Learn about our data and confidentiality safeguards, and the steps we take to produce statistics that can be trusted by all.