The assessments included 27 tasks investigating students’ understandings, processes and skills in the area of measurement. Measurement includes knowledge, understanding and use of systems of measurement, the use of measurement apparatus, and processes of predicting, calculating and recording. This chapter includes tasks relating to money.

Nine tasks were identical for both year 4 and year 8. Six tasks had overlapping versions for year 4 and year 8 students, with some parts common to both levels. Two tasks were attempted by year 4 students only, and nine tasks by year 8 only. Eleven tasks are trend tasks (fully described with data for 2001 and 2005), four are released tasks (fully described with data for 2005 only) and 12 are link tasks (to be used again in 2009, so only partially described here).

The tasks are presented in three sections: trend tasks, then released tasks, and finally link tasks. Within each section, tasks attempted (in whole or part) by both year 4 and year 8 students are presented first, followed by parallel tasks, then tasks attempted by year 8 only.

Averaged across 79 task components administered to both year 4 and year 8 students, 28.9 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded with these components. Year 8 students performed better on 78 of 79 components. As expected, the differences were larger on more difficult tasks that allow for more room for growth. These were often tasks that year 4 students had not had much opportunity to learn in school.

There was little evidence of change between 2001 and 2005. Averaged across 53 trend task components attempted by year 4 students in both years, slightly less than one percent more students succeeded in 2005 than in 2001. Gains occurred on 28 of the 53 components. At the year 8 level, with 65 task components included, again there was a slightly less than one percent gain from 2001 to 2005. Gains occurred on 29 of 65 components.

The measurement tasks represented a broad range of skills related to the processes and applications of making and using measurements. There were some problems in performance with basic measurement tasks, especially for year 4. However, student performance was uniformly stronger in the areas of making and reading measurements in straightforward applications, than in the areas related to using measurements and measurement processes to solve problems.