PISA 2006: Reading Literacy - How ready are our 15-year-olds for tomorrow’s world?

Ethnicity, language and immigration status

Ethnicity

Five broad ethnic classifications are used to describe ethnicity in New Zealand. They are Pākehā/European, Māori, Pasifika, Asian, and ‘Other’ ethnic groups. Figure 5 shows the breakdown of the estimated 15-year-old population by ethnicity in PISA 2006.

Figure 5: Proportions of each ethnic grouping in PISA 2006

Previous international studies have shown that reading literacy achievement varies across ethnic groupings. The results at Year 5 level in PIRLS 2001 and 2005/2006 (Chamberlain, in press) have shown a consistent pattern of significantly higher mean reading achievement for Pākehā/European and Asian students than for Māori and Pasifika students. In the 15-year-old age group, previous results from PISA have reflected a similar pattern (for example, PISA 2000, see Sturrock and May 2002).

Student performance by ethnicity

In PISA 2006, Pākehā/European students (542) had significantly higher mean achievement than did their Asian (528), Other (503), Māori (477) and Pasifika (461) counterparts. No significant difference was observed between the average achievement of Māori and Pasifika students.¹

There has been no significant change in the mean performance of any of these ethnic groupings since either 2000 or 2003.

Figure 6: Mean reading literacy achievement, by ethnicity

Ethnicity and gender

Figure 7 illustrates the mean reading achievement for boys and girls within each ethnic grouping.²  Female students of every ethnicity performed on average better than their male counterparts. The differences recorded ranged from 39 score points for Māori girls, to 22 score points for Pasifika girls (compared to Pākehā/European girls with 35, and 27 for Asian girls).

Figure 7: Mean reading literacy achievement, by ethnicity and gender

Ethnicity and proficiency levels

Variation in performance both between and within ethnic groupings is further shown when we examine the proportions achieving at each proficiency level. As can be seen in Figure 8, within all ethnic groupings there were students who achieved at the highest proficiency level, and students who achieved at the lowest proficiency level. A higher proportion of Asian and Pākehā/European students (both around 19%) were proficient at the highest level compared with the other ethnic groupings (Other 11%, Māori 8% and Pasifika 6%).

Combining the percentages for Level 4 and 5, we can see that nearly half of all Asian (45%) and Pākehā/European (47%) students, and nearly one in five Pasifika (19%), one in four Māori (24%) and one in three Other (33%) students demonstrated their ability to complete difficult reading tasks.

At the lower end of the proficiency spectrum, a greater proportion of Pasifika (12%) and Māori (9%) students performed below Level 1 compared with Asian (5%) and Pākehā/European (2%) students. Combining the proportions of students below Level 1 and in Level 1, nearly one-third of Pasifika (30%) and one-quarter of Māori (25%) students compared with nine percent of Pākehā/European, 16 percent of Asian, and 20 percent of Other ethnic students were unable to consistently complete tasks beyond the simplest reading tasks that PISA seeks to measure.

Figure 8: Reading literacy proficiency levels, by ethnicity

It is clear from the proficiency level proportions that Māori and Pasifika students were over-represented at the lowest levels of proficiency. However, in terms of actual numbers, Pākehā/European students made up the single largest group of low achievers. Figure 9 shows the ethnic composition of the 15 percent of students who achieved at Level 1 or below. Of these, well over a third, or 5.5 percent of all students, were Pākehā/European.

 

Figure 9: Ethnic groupings in reading literacy Level 1 and below

Note: percentages are of all New Zealand 15-year-olds 

 

Proficiency level trends by ethnicity

There has been only one significant change to the proportions within ethnic groupings in New Zealand achieving at each proficiency level: the proportion of Pākehā students achieving at Level 5 decreased from 23 percent in 2000 to 19 percent in 2006. All other proportions have remained stable.

Language spoken at home

Another factor influencing the performance of students may be the language spoken at home. Students in PISA³ were asked: “What language do you speak at home most of the time?” and this was then classified as either the language of the test (in New Zealand this was English) or other language, for the purposes of international comparisons. Approximately 9 out of every 10 New Zealand students responded that English was the language they spoke most at home, while approximately 1 out of every 10 responded that it was a language other than English.⁴

As can be seen in Figures 10 and 11, students who mostly speak English at home performed significantly better in reading literacy than those who mostly speak another language. The difference in mean scores was 42 scale score points (529 compared with 487). This difference in favour of students speaking the language of the test was observed in all OECD countries and compares with an OECD average difference of 62 scale score points. The results for New Zealand students in PISA 2000 and 2003 also recorded a significant difference in performance in favour of those who mostly speak English at home.

Figure 10: Reading literacy distribution, by language spoken at home

In 2006 this difference is particularly seen at the extremes of performance. The proportions of each group in the mid-range Levels 2 and 3 were similar. However, 32 percent of other language students achieved at Level 4 or 5, compared with 43 percent of students who mostly speak English at home. While 12 percent of those who mostly speak English at home achieved at Level 1 or below, nearly 27 percent of other language students were in this low-achieving group. 

Figure 11: Reading literacy proficiency level proportions, by language spoken at home

It is interesting to note that the three highest-performing countries − Korea, Finland and Hong Kong-China − all had very small proportions of students who mostly speak a language different from that of the test (all fewer than 3%). However, this does not account for the overall difference in performance, since the mean reading literacy score of New Zealand students who mostly speak the language of the test at home (529) was still significantly lower than that of their counterparts in those three countries: 557, 548 and 539 respectively.

Immigrant status

Using reports from students on their country of birth and the country of birth of their parents, the OECD divided students into three categories to denote their immigrant status: native students, second-generation students, and first-generation students. The title native students was used where at least one of the student’s parents was born in New Zealand, second-generation students were those who were born in New Zealand but both of whose parents were not, while first-generation was used for students where both they and their parents were born outside of New Zealand. The majority of students were native (79%), with seven percent of students second generation and 14 percent first generation.⁵ These proportions have not changed significantly since 2000.⁶

Mean reading literacy achievement was not significantly different for second-generation New Zealand students (519) compared with their native and first-generation counterparts. However, native students (526) had significantly higher mean achievement than first-generation (507) students.

This represents some change since 2000 and 2003 when both first and second-generation students’ mean reading literacy scores were significantly lower than that of native students.⁷

Figure 12: Distributions of reading literacy achievement in PISA 2006 for students, by immigration classification

Examining the proficiency levels for these three groupings reveals very little difference between the three groupings at the highest proficiency levels. At the other end of the spectrum, a slightly greater proportion of first-generation students performed only at the lowest proficiency levels.

Figure 13: Percentage of students in each immigration classification at each of the reading literacy proficiency levels

 

Footnotes

1. The very small proportion of students in the Other ethnic grouping makes it difficult to give a precise estimate of their performance, and their mean achievement is not able to be distinguished statistically from that of either Asian or Māori students.
2. The very small number of students sampled in each of the categories ‘Other female’ and ‘Other male’ make it impossible to give any meaningful estimate of the performance of these groups.
   
3. Students who had received less than one year’s instruction in English and those in Māori immersion classes were excluded from the PISA sample in New Zealand.  
   
4. Note that the figures presented here exclude missing or invalid responses – there were 4% of such responses in the sample. They also exclude the small proportion (0.2%) from this sample that mostly speak Māori at home. Table A.2, Appendix 2, shows the ethnic make-up of these two language groupings in the New Zealand PISA sample.
   
5. Adjusted percentages are shown. There were 2% of students with missing data for these questions.
6. Note that the labels for these groupings have changed – what is now called first generation was called non-native; what is now called second generation was called first generation.
7. 2000: native 538, second-generation 507, first-generation 507; 2003: native 528, second-generation 506, first-generation 503.