An additional feature in national monitoring since 1999 has been the commitment to look directly at the achievement of Pacific students in New Zealand primary and intermediate schools. These students were among the samples in NEMP assessments between 1995 and 1998, but not in sufficient numbers to allow their results to be reported separately. At the request of the Ministry of Education, in each year since 1999 NEMP has selected special additional samples of 120 year 4 students and 120 year 8 students, so that the achievement of Pacific students could be assessed and reported. The augmented samples are too small, however, to allow separate reporting on students from different Pacific nations (such as Samoa, Tonga and Fiji).

All schools in the main NEMP year 8 sample that had 15 percent or more Pacific students (as classified in school records) were selected. All other schools nationally with at least 12 year 8 students and at least 15 percent Pacific students in their total roll were identified, and an additional random sample of 10 schools drawn from this list. A similar procedure was followed at year 4 level, except that schools already chosen at year 8 level were excluded from the sampling list. From each specially sampled school, 12 students (in 3 groups of 4) were sampled, confirmed and assessed using exactly the same procedures as in the main sample. The students’ performances were also scored in the same manner as the performances of students in the main sample.

The results for Pacific, Mäori, and “other” students in the schools with more than 15 percent Pacific students were then compared. Because all of the schools chosen for these analyses have at least 15 percent Pacific students, the results only apply to students at schools like these.

Differences among the three ethnic groups of students were checked for statistical significance using one-way analysis of variance on the overall scores for each task. Each analysis compared the performance of about 45 Pacific students, 25 Mäori students and 35 other students. The critical level for statistical significance was set at
p = .05 (so that differences this large or larger among the subgroups would not be expected by chance in more than five percent of cases). Where statistical significance occurred, Tukey tests were used to identify which groups differed significantly.

The mean scores for each group on each task are presented in the four tables below, together with the standard deviations for all students in this sample. Statistically significant differences are clearly indicated.

For year 4 students, there were statistically significant differences in performance among the three groups on four of the 28 health tasks. The Pacific students scored lower than the “other” students on all four tasks. There were also statistically significant differences on two questions of the Health Survey. Pacific and Mäori student were more positive than “other” students about doing health education in school (question 1), and compared to “other” students Pacific students believed that their class more often did things to help them learn about health (question 4).

For year 4 students, there was a statistically significant difference in performance among the three groups on just one of the 22 physical education tasks. The Pacific and Mäori students scored higher than the “other” students on Link Task 13. There was also a difference on one question of the Physical Education Survey, with Mäori and Pacific students believing that their teachers rated their physical education capabilities more positively (question 3).