PISA 2003
Information about PISA 2003, including a summary of New Zealand's performance and access to publications using PISA 2003 data.
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Key findings of PISA 2003
Learning for Tomorrow's World: New Zealand Summary Report summarises the main results from PISA 2003 for New Zealand and places these results in the international context of the other participating countries. Key findings from PISA 2003 were:
- The New Zealand student mean score in each of reading, mathematics and science as measured by PISA placed New Zealand within the group of second highest performing countries for each subject area, along with countries such as Australia, Canada and Japan.
- New Zealand had a wide distribution of achievement scores in each of reading, mathematics and science.
- The achievement of New Zealand students did not change significantly between the 2000 and 2003 PISA assessments in reading, mathematics or science. Internationally, average mathematics performance increased in one of two content areas over this period, while performances in reading and science have essentially remained unchanged.
- New Zealand students also performed well in the cross-curricular competency of problem solving. New Zealand's mean score was in line with those of countries, such as Australia, Canada, Hong Kong-China and Japan, that recorded the second highest level of achievement in problem solving.
- In terms of some of the cognitive, affective and attitudinal outcomes of learning measured in PISA, students in New Zealand are generally well placed to meet the challenges they may face once they leave school. For example, their reported self-confidence in mathematics was high relative to the average across OECD countries, and they were among the more frequent users of both memorisation and elaboration learning strategies.
- Principals in New Zealand schools tended to be more positive than principals across the OECD in their views on the effect of possible resource shortages in their schools, reporting that such shortages generally had no or minimal impact on schools’ ability to provide instruction.
Publications
The Ministry of Education has published a number of research reports based on the 2000 and 2003 PISA assessments, which are available from the PISA publication home page.
