: 2004 Introduction
Play It The 2004 music assessments included 12 assessment tasks involving performing music. Ten of the tasks were identical for year 4 and year 8 students, while the other two had additional components for year 8 students. Three are trend tasks (fully described with data for both 2000 and 2004), three are released tasks (fully described with data for 2004 only), and six are link tasks (to be used again in 2008, so only partially described here). Four of the tasks were administered in one-to-one interviews, with the other eight in team or group format. Of the latter eight tasks, four were analysed solely for performance of the group, two for performance of the individual students, and two for both group and individual performance. The task details and results for the trend tasks are presented in the first section, followed by the task details and results for the released tasks. The third section contains some task information and the results for the link tasks. Comparing Results for Year 4 and Year 8 Students Averaged across 55 task components used with both year 4 and year 8 students, eight percent more year 8 than year 4 students or teams produced good responses. Year 4 students performed as well or better than year 8 students on most task components involving singing, with year 8 students doing substantially better on the other tasks. Trend Results: Comparing 2000 and 2004 Results Three trend tasks involving a total of 19 components were administered to year 4 students in both the 2000 and 2004 assessments. Overall, little change was evident. Looking at the number of year 4 students achieving the most positive rating category for each component, there was improvement from 2000 to 2004 on 11 of the 19 components, with, on average, two percent more students gaining the highest rating in 2004. The same analysis for year 8 students showed improvements from 2000 to 2004 on 8 of the 19 components, but, on average, one percent fewer students gained the highest rating in 2004.