OVERVIEW

Determining what information was necessary in a given setting was challenging for year 4 students, but there was substantial growth from year 4 to year 8. Students at year 4 were not successful when the task called for them to generate information needs with little external support. The trend in performance from 2005 to 2009 was small, but in a positive direction.

The assessments related to Clarifying Information Needs consisted of eight tasks that allowed students to show their skills in clarifying information needs through analysing what information was required, planning how to obtain the information, and selecting or developing appropriate questions.

Year 4 students were only modestly successful on most of these tasks, especially those that asked for students to generate information needs with little or no supporting information given (see, for example, School Fair). Year 8 students were much more successful at these tasks. Overall, year 8 students outperformed year 4 students on the tasks that both groups attempted; averaged across 63 task components, 13% more year 8 than year 4 students were successful on these components.

Differences in performance from 2005 to 2009 were positive, but small. At year 4, there were 23 task components that had been attempted by students in 2005 as well as 2009. Overall, year 4 students in 2009 scored 2% higher than in 2005, a slight increase in performance. At year 8 there were 29 task components in common across the two administrations, with the 2009 sample scoring 3% higher on average: again, a slight improvement.

Seven of the tasks were identical for both year 4 and year 8 students in the 2009 administration. One task was attempted only by year 8 students. Four tasks are trend tasks, containing full information for the 2005 and 2009 administration and four tasks are link tasks to be used at a later administration and only partially described here.

The tasks are presented here in the following order:

• trend tasks attempted by year 4 and year 8 students;
• the trend task attempted by only year 8 students;
• link tasks attempted by year 4 and year 8 students.