The Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairi Quinn, has said there has to be a drive to reform of the secondary school system, in particular to address the subject of mathematics.
His comments on RTE radio came as tens of thousands of Leaving Cert received their results today.
Teaching unions and business groups have expressed concern about the high failure rate in maths. 4,000 students failed the subject.
Mr Quinn said he had asked his Minister of State, Seán Sherlock, to look at ways of improving the maths performance in the short-term.
Next month, for the first time, the Higher Education Authority, which co-ordinates the work of the third level sector, will meet the National Council for Curriculum Assessment at a conference to explore the issue of reform.
Business group IBEC earlier called for 'major reform' of the Leaving Cert system after what it called another disappointing set of maths and science results.
IBEC said continuing plans to reform second-level maths curriculum must be adequately funded and receive the full support of the education system.
The group's head of education policy Tony Donohoe said fluency in maths was vital to the educational and economic well-being of the country.
'Less than 16% of the 51,991 students that sat Leaving Certificate maths took the higher level paper. This is down from a high of 18.9% in 2005 and is significantly out of line with other subjects,' he said.
Mr Donohoe said the roll-out of Project Maths was a step in the right direction, but the quality of teaching was 'critical'.
