Musical Sticks

The 2000 music assessments included five assessment tasks related to responding to music.

All five tasks were identical for year 4 and year 8 students. One is a trend task (fully described with data for both 1996 and 2000), two are released tasks (fully described with data for 2000 only), and two are link tasks (to be used again in 2004, so only partially described here).

The task details and results for the trend task are presented in the first section, followed by the task details and results for the two released tasks. The third section contains some task information and the results for the two link tasks.

Comparing results for year 4 and year 8 students
Averaged across 25 task components, 12 percent more year 8 than year 4 students (or teams of students) produced correct responses. This indicates that, on average, students have made useful progress between year 4 and year 8 in the skills assessed by the tasks. The difference was smaller, averaging five percent, on the two tasks involving moving to music, with year 4 students showing slightly greater freedom and inventiveness.

Trend results: comparing 1996 and 2000 results
One trend task, Musical Sticks, involving a total of five components, was administered to students in both the 1996 and 2000 assessments.

For year 4 students, modest improvement was evident. Looking first at the most positive rating category for each component, there was improvement from 1996 to 2000 on four of the five components, with on average two percent more students gaining the highest rating (a very slight change). Looking at the lowest rating category for each component, greater improvement was evident, with the percentages dropping on all five components. On average 10 percent fewer students gained the lowest rating.

For year 8 students there was quite substantial improvement between 1996 and 2000. Looking first at the most positive rating category for each component, there were increases from 1996 to 2000 on all five components, with on average eight percent more students gaining the highest rating. Looking at the lowest rating category for each component, similar improvement was evident, with the percentages dropping on all five components and on average 12 percent fewer students gaining the lowest rating.