The assessments included 24 tasks that explored how well the students could find and gather information. Specifically, the tasks explored students’ knowledge and skills relating to:

• the organisation of libraries, reference books and other books
• the types of information available from different sources
• finding particular information in books, pamphlets, diagrams, video recordings, and simulations of the internet
• extracting and recording relevant information.

Six tasks were identical for both year 4 and year 8 students, two were very similar for year 4 and year 8 students but truncated for year 4 students, three were attempted only by year 4 students and 13 were attempted only by year 8 students. Five are trend tasks (fully described with data for both 2001 and 2005), nine are released tasks (fully described with data for 2005 only) and 10 are link tasks (to be used again in 2009, so only partially described here).

The tasks are presented in the following order:

• trend tasks attempted by both year 4 and year 8 students
• trend tasks attempted by only year 4 or year 8 students
• released tasks attempted by both year 4 and year 8 students
• released tasks attempted by only year 4 or year 8 students
• link tasks attempted by both year 4 and year 8 students
• link tasks attempted by only year 4 or year 8 students.

Year 8 students enjoyed substantially more success than year 4 students. Averaged across 52 components of eight tasks attempted by both years, 23 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded well with these components. Year 8 students scored higher on all 52 components.

Averaged across 25 components of two trend tasks attempted by year 4 students in both 2001 and 2005, one percent fewer students succeeded in 2005 than in 2001. This is a negligible decrease. At year 8 level, with 68 components of four trend tasks included, on average three percent more students succeeded in 2005. This is a small increase.