Monitoring Student Progress in Reading

While there is no form of national testing in New Zealand, system level monitoring is used to provide an overview of achievement at two points of schooling: Year 4 and Year 8. The National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA), a national monitoring project aligned to the New Zealand Curriculum, was implemented in 2012 to replace the National Education Monitoring Project, which ran from 1995 to 2009. As part of its program of assessment, reading comprehension in English was assessed at Years 4 and 8 in 2014.

In the school sector, state and state integrated schools are required to have assessment policies in accordance with the National Administration Guidelines, a set of expectations published by the Ministry of Education for boards of trustees through school principals and teachers.⁵⁷ One of these guidelines states that schools should gather information that is sufficiently comprehensive to enable the progress and achievement of students to be evaluated.

Specifically, the guidelines require schools to monitor student progress and achievement using a range of assessment practices giving priority to literacy and numeracy. Schools also are required to report to students in Years 1 to 8 and their parents on their progress and achievement in relation to national standards.⁵⁸

National Standards (for English medium settings) and Ngā Whanaketanga Rumaki Māori (for Māori medium settings) are underpinned by assessment for learning principles and practice and rely on teachers making overall professional judgments about their students in relation to the standards, using multiple sources of formal and informal information.⁵⁹ Furthermore, the Ministry of Education does not mandate the use of any particular assessment tool, although a number of assessment tools—including norm referenced tools—are available to teachers. Additionally, in 2015, the Ministry of Education released the Progress and Consistency Tool to support (English medium) teachers in English medium settings in making judgments (referred to as Overall Teacher Judgments) of student progress and achievement against the National Standards.^60,61 Exhibit 5 summarizes the range of assessment tools and tasks that are available to teachers as part of their assessment practice.

Exhibit 5: Examples of Assessment Tools for Monitoring Individual Student Progress in Reading

Assessment Tool	Year Level	Description
Running Records and Pūkete/Pānui Haere⁶²	Years 1 to 3	Standardized procedures for recording students’ oral reading performance; a diagnostic tool. Data collected on running word error rate, accuracy, and self-correction across a range of text difficulty levels. Pūkete Pānui Haere provides a running record assessment in Māori.
Burt Word Reading Test (New Zealand Revision)⁶³	Years 2 to 9	Standardized; individually administered recognition test. Best used in conjunction with other reading assessments.
The Supplementary Test of Achievement in Reading (STAR) Test⁶⁴	Years 3 to 9	Standardized; either individual or groups of students; pencil and paper, norm-referenced diagnostic tool to examine students’ progress in several aspects of reading (including word recognition, sentence comprehension, paragraph comprehension, and vocabulary range).
Progressive Achievement Tests (PATs)⁶⁵ in Reading	Years 4 to 10	Standardized; individual or groups of students; assesses reading comprehension; pencil and paper (manual or online marking). All tests are norm-referenced, enabling teachers to make valid and reliable comparisons between their students and samples of students. Test scores convert to scale scores.
e-Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (e-AsTTLe)⁶⁶	Years 4 to 12	Standardized; usually with groups of students; Web-based or pencil and paper; available in English and Māori; reading comprehension aligned to The NZC/TMoA. The results are analyzed using norm-referenced and nationally moderated criteria. Student scores reported as scale scores.

The announcement of Mātaiako (the Māori Medium Assessment Tools and Items Programme) in 2011 is addressing the need for quality assessment resources in Māori medium settings to report on progress as articulated by Ngā Whanaketanga Rumaki Māori. One example is the development of Kaiaka Reo: Reo-ā-Waha Ki Te Motu Māori Oral Language Proficiency Progressions.⁶⁷