NINE DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES National Monitoring results are analysed and reported task by task. Although the emphasis is on the overall national picture of student achievement, attention is also given to examining performance patterns for different demographic groups and categories of school. Nine variables were used for creating subgroups, with students divided into two or three subgroups on each variable.
TABLE 1
9 Demographic Variables and Subgroups
Variables Subgroups
Gender male, female.
Ethnicity Mäori, non-Mäori.
Socio-economic index for the school bottom three deciles (1 – 3),
middle four deciles (4 – 7),
highest three deciles (8 – 10).
Size of school Year 4 Schools: less than 20 year 4 students, 20-35 year 4 students, more than 35 year 4 students.
Year 8 Schools: less than 35 year 8 students, 35 – 150 year 8 students, more than 150 year 8 students.
Type of school full primary school, intermediate school. (Some students were in other types of schools, but too few to allow separate analysis.)
Geographic zone greater Auckland,
other North Island,
South Island.
Size of community urban area over 100,000,
community of 10,000 to 100,000,
rural area or town of less than 10,000.
Percent of Mäori children in the school less than 10 percent,
10 to 30 percent,
more than 30 percent.
Percent of Pacific Island students in the school less than 5 percent,
5 percent or more.
Each of the categories listed above, except the small year 4 schools in one year, included at least 16 percent of the students. Categories containing fewer students, such as Asian students or female Mäori students, were not used because the resulting statistics would be based on the performance of fewer than 75 students, and would therefore be too unreliable. The analyses of the relative performance of subgroups used an overall score for each task, created by adding scores for the most important components of the task. Where only two subgroups were compared, differences in task performance between the two subgroups were checked for statistical significance using t-tests. Where three subgroups were compared, one way analysis of variance was used to check for statistically significant differences among the three subgroups. Because the number of students included in each analysis was quite large (approximately 450), the statistical tests were sensitive to small differences. To reduce the likelihood of attention being drawn to unimportant differences, the critical level for statistical significance was set at p = .01 so that differences this large or larger among the subgroups would not be expected by chance in more than one percent of cases. For team tasks, the critical level was raised to p = .05, because of the smaller sample size (120 teams rather than about 450 students).
   
NUMBERS OF ASSESSMENT TASKS Each year a variety of tasks were undertaken by the three groups of students in each school or pair of small schools. The number of components in individual tasks varied considerably from one to several markable items. A large proportion of tasks were identical for year 4 and year 8, some had small adjustments to take account of age appropriateness, and some were entirely different for reasons of curriculum constructs.

TABLE 2
Number of Assessment Tasks Administered in the First Four Year Cycle, 1995 - 1998

Subject Area
Year 4
Year 8
Total Tasks
Science
37
39
54
Art
11
11
16
Graphs, Tables, Maps
29
31
45
Reading
17
17
25
Speaking
13
13
18
Technology
15
16
22
Music
22
21
31
Mathematics
51
46
82
Social Studies
19
26
35
Information Skills
21
27
37
Writing
24
29
34
Listening
8
9
12
Viewing
11
14
19
Health
31
32
39
Physical Education
25
25
30
TOTALS
334
356
499
   
PERFORMANCE OF SUBGROUPS ACROSS THE FIRST FOUR YEARS

The summary tables that follow show the relative performance of subgroups within each of the nine demographic variables. The data show percentages of the total number of tasks which had some or no significant differences in performance between subgroups in each of the 15 learning areas which were assessed. Notable differences occurred in subgroups of gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status, whereas differences in school size, type and location were few or non-existent.
   Gender Differences
   Mäori / Non-Mäori Differences
   Socio-Economic Differences
   School Size Differences
   School Type Differences
   Geographic Zone Differences
   Community Size Differences
   Proportion of Mäori Students in School
   Proportion of Pacific Island Students in School