Reading/Pānui: primary schooling

International Comparison

In addition to using National Standards and Ngā Whanaketanga Rumaki Māori to examine literacy trends within New Zealand, international studies are used to examine primary-aged students' reading literacy in relation to other nations and education systems.

How We Are Going

Year 5 students in New Zealand have moderately high reading literacy achievement, on average, compared with their counterparts in other countries, and like most countries, girls generally have higher achievement than boys.

New Zealand Year 5 students' mean reading literacy score (531) was significantly higher than the PIRLS Scale Centrepoint (500). There has been no significant change in Year 5 students' reading literacy performance over the period 2001 to 2010.

The spread of scores between New Zealand's higher performing students and lower performing students was relatively wide compared with other countries where English was one of the assessment languages. (New Zealand assessed a very small group, 2%, in te reo Māori). There has been little change in this range over the period 2001 to 2010.

Table 1: Trends in the distribution of Year 5 students' reading literacy achievement, 2001-2010

New Zealand Year 5 students' mean performance in reading literacy was significantly higher than 17 countries but was significantly lower than 20 countries including Finland, the United States, England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Canada

As mentioned, there has been no significant change in achievement over three cycles of PIRLS, from 2001 to 2010. However, while New Zealand's mean reading literacy achievement did not change, New Zealand's standing relative to 18 other countries across three cycles changed from 10th in 2001 to 13th in 2005/06, and 2010/11. Table 1 shows the other countries that have also participated in all three PIRLS cycles and New Zealand's standing relative to those countries.

Table 2: Relative standing of countries in three cycles of PIRLS, 2001-2010/11

Notes:

  1. Standard errors appear in parentheses.
  2. Israel (not shown) participated in 2001 and 2005/06. In both years, its mean reading scores were significantly lower than the New Zealand means. However, comparisons could not be made with 2010/11 due to the changes made to their assessment texts during the translation process.
  3. The percentage of students in Morocco with achievement too low for estimation exceeded 25%. The mean scores are shown in the figure for illustrative purposes only and were not used in the calculations for the trend means.

The international reading benchmarks are four points on the reading scale that describe the types of comprehension skills students demonstrated when reading the PIRLS texts and answering the questions associated with the texts. They are: the Advanced International Benchmark (625), the High International Benchmark (550), the Intermediate International Benchmark (475), and the Low International Benchmark (400). In 2010, 14% of Year 5 students reached the Advanced International Benchmark; 8% did not reach the Low International Benchmark. In terms of the benchmark definitions, these Year 5 students had difficulty with locating and retrieving explicitly-stated detail from the reading texts. The proportion of students reaching each of these benchmarks has not changed significantly over the three cycles.

Gender

There has been no significant change in the mean reading achievement of Year 5 boys or Year 5 girls across the three cycles of PIRLS. The mean reading achievement of Year 5 girls was significantly higher than boys and this difference was one of the largest among the countries participating in PIRLS. The average difference has, however, decreased over time from 27 in 2001 to 20 in 2010.

The 2011 international gender comparison in reading achievement complements findings from the 2013 National Standards data where slight gender difference in females' favour was found.  Ngā Whanaketanga 2013 results show the same gender disparity, with females more likely to be manawa ora or manawa toa in pānui. However, in making these general comparisons it is important to note that the PIRLS research is based on a sample of only Year 5 students in 2011, whereas National Standards and Ngā Whanaketanga Rumaki Māori reported in this indicator are from 2013 and are intended to include all Year 1 to 8 students under at least one of the two assessment types.

Figure 1: Mean PIRLS reading scale scores, by gender (2010)

Note:

  1. Error bars on the graph provide a 95 percent confidence interval for the estimate of the mean.

Socio-economic Status

Principals in all PIRLS countries were asked to provide estimates, using a four-point scale—'0–10%', '11-25%', '26-50%', and 'more than 50%'—of the proportions of students in their school that came from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and the proportion coming from economically affluent homes. Analysis showed that New Zealand principals' estimates of economic composition aligned very well with the Ministry of Educations decile for their schools and vice versa.

Internationally, all principals' responses to the questions on the two socio-economic measures (economically disadvantaged vs. economically affluent) were then aggregated in order to describe the overall student body: schools that had proportionally more disadvantaged than affluent students (i.e., more than 25% from economically disadvantaged homes and 25% or fewer from economically affluent homes) and schools with more affluent than disadvantaged students (i.e., 25% or fewer students from economically disadvantaged homes and more than 25% of students from economically affluent homes).

The mean reading performance of Year 5 students increases as the aggregated level of socio-economic rating increases both for New Zealand and internationally. However, the gradient of change in performance between the levels is steeper for New Zealand than internationally. Economic differences seem to have a greater impact on New Zealand student achievement than internationally.

Figure 2: Mean PIRLS reading scale scores, by gender (2010)

Notes:

  1. The data points are the mean reading scores for the Year 5 students according to their schools' economic composition.
  2. Error bars on the graph provide a 95 percent confidence interval for the estimate of the mean.

References

  • Chamberlain, M. (2013). PIRLS 2010/11 in New Zealand: An overview of national findings from the third cycle of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Wellington: Ministry of Education.
  • Ministry of Education (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington: Ministry of Education.
  • Ministry of Education (2008). Te Marautanga o Aotearoa. Wellington: Ministry of Education.
  • Mullis, I.V.S., Martin, M.O., Foy, P. & Drucker, K.T. (2012). PIRLS 2011 International Results in Reading. Chestnut Hill, MA: TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Boston College.


The Ministry of Education has established an Iterative Best Evidence Synthesis Programme to systematically identify, evaluate, analyse, synthesise and make accessible, relevant evidence linked to a range of learner outcomes. Evidence about what works for this indicator can be found at: What Works Evidence Hei Kete Raukura BES (Iterative Best Evidence Synthesis) Programme.

The Ministry of Education also reports on results from the National Standards School Sample Monitoring and Evaluation Project 2010-2013, a three year project on National Standards implementation in a representative sample of schools.