Preface

Summary
New Zealand's National Education Monitoring Project commenced in 1993, with the task of assessing and reporting on the achievement of New Zealand primary school children in all areas of the school curriculum. Children are assessed at two class levels: Year 4 (halfway through primary education) and Year 8 (at the end of primary education). Different curriculum areas and skills are assessed each year, over a four year cycle. The main goal of national monitoring is to provide detailed information about what children can do so that patterns of performance can be recognised, successes celebrated, and desirable changes to educational practices and resources identified and implemented.

Each year, small random samples of children are selected nationally, then assessed in their own schools by teachers specially seconded and trained for this work. Task instructions are given orally by teachers, through video presentations, or in writing. Many of the assessment tasks involve the children in the use of equipment and supplies. Their responses are presented orally, by demonstration, in writing, or through submission of other physical products. Many of the responses are recorded on videotape for subsequent analysis.

In 1998, the fourth year that national monitoring was implemented, two areas were assessed: health and physical education, and the writing, listening and viewing components of the English curriculum. This report presents details and results of the assessments of students' skills, knowledge, perceptions and attitudes relating to writing.

The framework for writing is presented in the Assessing Writing section. The writing framework has as its central organising theme constructing and communicating meaning in written forms for various purposes and audiences. Within the framework are listed 8 understandings, 15 purposes for writing, and 15 skills (in 4 clusters), together with student attitudes toward and involvement in writing.

Chapter 3 focuses on expressive writing, in which students were given freedom to write inventively, within task guidelines. Characteristics sought included ability to write coherently, to communicate personal feeling, to communicate stories or ideas vividly, and to follow conventions associated with particular forms of writing (such as poetry). Medium proportions of year 4 students and higher proportions of year 8 students followed the task guidelines quite well, but most students were less able to achieve the vividness, personal feeling or humour that distinguished top quality writing. Considering the seven tasks which allowed comparisons of the performance of year 4 and year 8 students, on average 27 percent more year 8 students than year 4 students gained high scores.

The focus of Chapter 4 is functional writing. Students were asked to present information clearly and accurately in written form. They acted as reporters, gave instructions, prepared advertisements, wrote party invitations, left notes, filled in forms, and wrote letters, faxes and e-mail messages. Considering the eleven tasks which allowed comparisons of the performance of year 4 and year 8 students, on average 32 percent more year 8 students than year 4 students gained high scores. The margin of superiority ranged from 25 percent of students on one task to 44 percent of students on another. These margins are among the largest recorded in four years of national monitoring, perhaps reflecting the greater opportunities year 8 students have had to practice the writing conventions associated with many of these tasks.

Writing Conventions examines students' performance in spelling, punctuation and handwriting, using tasks specifically designed for this purpose. These skills were also assessed more indirectly within some of the tasks in Chapters 3 and 4. There was a marked improvement in "best" handwriting from year 4 to year 8, and even greater improvement in writing speed. The spelling and punctuation results revealed considerable scope for improvement at both age levels: few students made most of the changes required, and some made very few correct changes along with several inappropriate ones. When both computer-presented and paper-and-pencil versions of the same tasks were attempted by year 8 students, the results achieved were very similar but the computer version was much more popular.

Chapter 6 reports the results of surveys of students' attitudes about and involvement in writing activities, and their perceptions of their capabilities. Students' attitudes, interests and liking for a subject have a strong bearing on progress and learning outcomes. Enthusiasm for writing dropped markedly from year 4 to year 8. At both year levels writing stories was a highly favoured writing activity in school, with writing poems and letters also quite popular in school. In students' own time, writing stories was still clearly the most popular writing activity.

Chapter 7 reports the results of analyses that compared the performance of different demographic subgroups. School size, school type (full primary or intermediate), community size or geographic zone did not seem to be important factors predicting achievement on the writing tasks, or on attitudes to writing. Non-Mäori students outperformed Mäori students on about forty percent of the tasks at both year levels. Students attending schools with high proportions of Mäori students performed worse than students attending other schools on about half of the tasks at both year levels.

This contrasted with the improvement observed for students attending schools with more than five percent Pacific Island students: they performed worse than students at other schools on about half of the year 4 tasks but on less than ten percent of the year 8 tasks. There were statistically significant differences in the performance of students from low, medium and high decile schools on 83 percent of the year 4 tasks and 72 percent of the year 8 tasks. The most startling result, however, was the comparison of results for boys and girls. At both year levels, girls performed better than boys on a very high proportion of tasks (79 percent of year 4 tasks and 86 percent of year 8 tasks), and also displayed more positive attitudes to writing.