The Project directors acknowledge the vital support and contributions of many people to this report, including:

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 2002, the fourth year of the second cycle of national monitoring, 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 health and physical education.

Chapter 2 presents the NEMP framework for health and physical education. It has as its central organizing theme Personal and community well-being through enhancing health practices and physical education. Three areas of knowledge and understandings are identified, together with three clusters of skills, and students’ attitudes and involvement.

Body Parts

Chapter 3 presents the results that students achieved on 25 tasks relating to personal health and physical development. Averaged across 84 task components administered to both year 4 and year 8 students, 11 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded with these components. Trend analyses showed no meaningful change since 1998 for year 4 or year 8 students. Averaged across 64task components attempted by year 4 students in both years, the same percentage of students succeeded in 2002 as in 1998. At year 8 level, with 76 task components included in the analysis, 1 percent fewer students on average succeeded with the task components in 2002 than in 1998.

Students’ responses suggested quite strong awareness of some health and safety issues and messages. What was also evident, however, was that this awareness was often rather one-dimensional: having identified one or two key points, students had little to say about other important points. For instance, they emphasized physical heath and largely ignored social, emotional and spiritual health. Similarly, their main suggested response to fire was to get down low and crawl, with little obvious attention to other risks or issues that may need to be considered.

Tï Räkau

Chapter 4 reports the results achieved on 24 tasks involving movement concepts and motor skills. The activities often involved the use of equipment, such as balls, bats, and skipping ropes, in addition to physical coordination. Averaged across 88 task components administered to both year 4 and year 8 students, 16 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded with these components. The smallest differences generally occurred on task components that focused on technique, with the largest differences on task components that emphasized speed and precision. Trend analyses showed no meaningful change since 1998 for year 4 or year 8 students, with just a hint of a decline for year 8 students. Averaged across 37 task components attempted by year 4 students in both years, the same percentage of students succeeded in 2002 as in 1998. At year 8 level, with 39 task components included in the analysis, 2 percent fewer students on average succeeded with the task components in 2002 than in 1998.

Winning

Chapter 5 presents the results for 14 tasks about relationships with other people. Students were asked to show what they understood about how the attitudes, values, actions, and needs of people interact, and to suggest strategies for dealing with relationship problems. Averaged across 23 task components administered to both year 4 and year 8 students, 14 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded with these components. Trend analyses showed no meaningful change since 1998 for year 4 or year 8 students, but with a hint of an improvement for year 8 students. Averaged across 9 task components attempted by year 4 students in both years, 1 percent more students succeeded in 2002 than in 1998. At year 8 level, with 10 task components included in the analysis, 3 percent more students on average succeeded with the task components in 2002 than in 1998.

Happy School

Chapter 6 presents the results for four tasks relating to healthy communities and environments. The stated aim of this strand of the curriculum is for students to participate in creating healthy communities and environments by taking responsible and critical action. This is not an easy area in which to create assessment tasks that can stand by themselves, separate from class programmes and activities and children’s life experiences. Averaged across 8 task components administered to both year 4 and year 8 students, 7 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded with these components. No trend information is available, because none of the 2002 tasks was used in 1998.

Chapter 7 reports the results of surveys of students’ attitudes about and involvement in health and physical education activities. Physical education was the favourite of twelve curriculum areas for year 8 students, and the second most popular (after art) for year 4 students. Health was last equal in popularity at both year levels, yet less than 20 percent of students at both levels expressed negative attitudes towards studying it. Enthusiasm for learning about health declined a little for year 4 students between 1998 and 2002, with little change for year 8 students. This was reversed for physical education, with a small drop at year 8 level but no change at year 4 level. Only 39 percent of year 4 students and 33 percent of year 8 students believed their class did things that helped them learn about health “lots” or “quite a lot”.

When asked to write down up to three very important things a person needs to learn or do to be good in physical education, year 4 students overwhelmingly emphasized physical or game skills, with subsidiary emphasis on fitness and then sportsmanship. Year 8 students gave more balanced responses, with fitness the most common choice, closely followed by three almost equally popular options: good sportsmanship, positive attitudes and effort, and physical or game skills.

Chapter 8 reports the results of analyses that compared the performances of different demographic subgroups. School size, school type (full primary or intermediate), community size, geographic zone and student ethnicity (Mäori/non-Mäori) did not seem to be important factors predicting achievement in health and physical education, or attitudes towards them.

Students attending low SES schools scored lower than other students on 32 percent of the health tasks at year 4 level and 44 percent at year 8 level. With PE tasks, however, there were differences involving SES for less than 10 percent of the tasks at both levels.

Girls performed better than boys on 11 percent of the year 4 health tasks and 33 percent of the year 8 health tasks. The picture was very different with PE tasks. At both year levels, boys performed better than girls on 44 to 50 percent of the tasks (most of the tasks that involved running fast, jumping, throwing, catching, hitting or dribbling balls), while girls performed better than boys on 23 to 26 percent of the tasks (involving precision movement and body control).

For physical education tasks, the only notable change between 1998 and 2002 was that in 1998, year 4 students from low SES schools performed better than their counterparts from higher SES schools on 17 percent of tasks. That positive disparity was no longer evident in 2002, with students from low SES schools performing worse on 4 percent of tasks and better on none. Comparing the subgroup performance patterns on health tasks in 2002 with those in 1998, the only notable change has been a reduction in the disparity of performance between Mäori and non-Mäori year 8 students. Non-Mäori students performed better than Mäori students on 27 percent of year 8 tasks in 1998, but only on 6 percent in 2002.

Chapter 9 reports the results of analyses of the achievement of Pacific Island students. Additional sampling of schools with high proportions of Pacific Island students permitted comparison of the achievement of Pacific Island, Mäori and “other” children attending schools that have more than 15 percent Pacific Island students enrolled. The results apply only to such schools, but it should be noted about 75 percent of all Pacific students attend schools in this category.

Compared to Mäori and “other” students, both year 4 and year 8 Pacific students in these schools performed less well than the “other” students on 14 percent of the health tasks, but better than the “other” students on 5 percent of the physical education tasks. In both areas and at both year levels, Pacific students performed very similarly to Mäori students in their schools. In the two surveys, the most notable feature was the high level of enthusiasm for and perceived competence in physical education displayed by year 8 Pacific students.