PISA 2006: Mathematical Literacy - How ready are our 15-year-olds for tomorrow's world?
This report describes New Zealand’s results for mathematical literacy in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006, which covers 57 countries. It expands on information already released in international and national reports in December 2007. In 2006, mathematical literacy was a minor focus in PISA. This report also includes information on New Zealand results from 2003.
Author: Robyn Caygill, Nicola Marshall & Steve May [Ministry of Education]Date Published: September 2008
Gender
On average, boys had higher mathematical literacy than girls, with a difference between their means of 11 scale score points. This pattern of a gender difference in favour of boys was also found in 2003 and was observable for many OECD countries. Across OECD countries the average gender difference in favour of boys was 11 score points. Hong Kong-China, the Netherlands, and Finland also had significant gender differences in favour of boys, while in Korea there was no significant difference between boys and girls.
As can be observed from Figure 3, the distribution of scores for New Zealand 15-year-old boys is wider than for girls. The wider range for boys is primarily due to the higher achievement scores among the better-performing boys at the top of the range.
Figure 3: Distributions of gender differences for mathematical achievement in PISA 2006
As shown in Figure 4, a significantly larger proportion of boys (7%) were proficient at the highest proficiency level, Level 6, when compared with girls (4%). That is, a larger proportion of boys than girls were deemed capable of advanced mathematical thinking and reasoning. Similarly, a higher proportion of boys were proficient at the second-highest level, Level 5 (15%) when compared with the girls (12%). Combining the proportions of students at the three highest proficiency levels, levels 4, 5, and 6, 44 percent of boys performed at or above these levels compared with 38 percent of girls. However, at the lower end of the spectrum, the same proportion of boys and girls were proficient at Level 1 and below (4% below Level 1 and 10% at Level 1 for both boys and girls).
Figure 4: Percentage of male and female students at each of the mathematical literacy proficiency levels
By way of comparison, New Zealand Years 5 and 9 boys and girls in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS-02/03), conducted in 2002, did not have any observable differences in achievement in mathematics (see Chamberlain 2007 and Caygill, Sturrock & Chamberlain 2007). The results from TIMSS may indicate that policies to reduce disparities between boys and girls are having a positive effect and if so, a reduction in the size of the gender difference may be expected in PISA in 2009.