New maths achievement study measured students against yet-to-be introduced curriculum

Tuesday, 6 August 2024

The education minister has denied she is “shifting the goalposts” by measuring students’ maths performance against a yet-to-be introduced maths curriculum.

The Government cited figures yesterday that only 22% of year eight students were reaching acceptable standards — compared to 42% previously — however, the children were measured against new standards which are yet to be introduced and a curriculum they have not yet been studying.

The Curriculum Insights report, made public yesterday but provided to the Government in July, revealed the results of an assessment carried out in term four of 2023 which were provisionally benchmarked against a 2023 draft version of the new curriculum statement on maths — a new curriculum that was developed by the previous Labour government to be introduced in 2026.

It showed just 22% of students would meet those curriculum expectations in year eight, as well as 28% in year six and 20% in year three.

But trend data from the study and the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement showed there had been no statistically significant change in mathematics achievement scores since 2013. On average, students had scored the same in 2013, 2018, 2022 and 2023.

“What we’re seeing in mathematics is a change in curriculum and a new benchmarking process rather than a change in achievement,” one of the study leads, Dr Charles Darr, said yesterday.

“We’ve been tracking student achievement in mathematics at year eight for more than 10 years, and in that time, there has been no evidence for improvement or decline. We do have a new draft curriculum however, and the provisional benchmarking exercise we carried out indicates it requires a higher level of proficiency than the 2007 curriculum.”

Work on the study began in 2023. Assessments included some elements of a previous study. Benchmarks to measure the assessments against were developed in 2024 — after the assessments took place. A spokesperson said the express purpose of the new study was to measure how students are progressing through the new curriculum.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the new figures amounted to “shifting the goalposts.

“They're assessing kids against a curriculum that's not yet been introduced. It's a bit like moving the goalpost after the kids have already kicked the ball.”

Hipkins said the most recent data based on the curriculum that students were being taught was from 2022, which showed about 42% of year eights were meeting the standard.

“That does highlight there is an issue, a gap between years four and years eight, that seems to be where we lose progress in the system. But that gap has been pretty consistent now for a long time, so there's no magical fix here.”

Yesterday, in announcing the study and further moves to overhaul the education sector, Stanford and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon characterised the results as so shocking they taken “urgent” action.

“We’ve acted incredibly quickly,” said Luxon yesterday, “I think it was the 17th of July that the minister was told about the data, and she asked immediately her ministry of education, the next day, for a please explain. Work began on an alternative plan, or what she could look to accelerate, and frankly, Minister Stanford has done an excellent job of that.”

“We spoke .. .in Auckland, in a Koru Lounge, I then called in DPMC (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet) four days later to say, right-o, what can we do? The minister and I then both called in the secretary of education, and also the full executive team, to put the plan in place. We have accelerated and worked incredibly quickly.”

Stanford said the data was new in that for the first time it showed specifically where year eight students were tracking, rather than assessing across multiple year bands.

She agreed the results weren’t necessarily “worse” than any other year.

“In fact, it's probably broadly the same. We've just never actually measured it like that before and so parents have been told that their children are at curriculum when the reality was they could have been up to two or three years behind where they should have been.”

She defended the study, saying the new curriculum was internationally benchmarked.

“So there's a level of detail in the new curriculum we haven't had before, and I'll give you an example. So in year eight, we might have said, right, you need to be able to order decimals in order of highest to lowest. And now we're expecting them to do it to three decimal places. There was no specificity before.

“Now we're saying we actually need to make sure that kids are where they need to be so they can hit high school and experience success. It's the first time this has happened, and it absolutely has to happen, because otherwise, we're going to continue to see half of our kids failing functional numeracy assessments.”

Asked if the 22% figure was useful, she said: “It is absolutely useful. The last government were the ones who put, who actually ordered this assessment and good on them, and it's given us some very sobering data.“