This week the OECD produced figures showing Ireland devotes less time on average to teaching science and maths than other countries, and more time teaching RE. We’re rightly worried about falling literacy and numeracy skills here and some people have concluded that the answer is to spend less time teaching RE.

But as David Quinn points out in his Irish Independent column this week, if religious education is to blame, that Church-run schools should, academically speaking, do worse on average than others, but in fact they do better.