Curriculum Insights and Progress Study: Foundation Area - Reading 2023 Publications

Publication Details

This report estimates the reading achievement of Year 3,6 and 8 students in English-medium state and state-integrated schools. Students were assessed in October 2023.

Author(s): The Educational Assessment Research Unit (EARU) at the University of Otago, and the New Zealand Council for Educational research (NZCER). Report for the Ministry of Education.

Date Published: August 2024

Key findings

  • Figure 1 Around half of students are meeting the expected curriculum reading level for their age, with Year 3 at 54%, Year 6 at 52%, and Year 8 at 47%.
  • Additionally, another 10-16% of students are less than one year behind the benchmark for their age.
  • A large group of students are more than one year behind the relevant curriculum benchmark. This grows over the course of primary schooling - from 30% in Year 3, 32% in Year 6, up to 43% in Year 8.
  • On average, students are making progress in the curriculum as they go through primary school. However, many are not progressing at the rate required to keep up with the curriculum expectation – especially in later years. There continues to be strong association of socio-economic status with student achievement, where students from schools with a lower equity index (EQI) score (that is, more advantaged students) perform better than their less advantaged peers.

Previous national results for reading came from NMSSA in 2019. At that time, 63% of Year 4’s and 56% of Year 8’s achieved the curriculum benchmarks associated with reading for English purposes in the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum.

Table 1: Proportion of students who achieved curriculum benchmark for each Year   (%)
2023 Reading Year 3 Year 6 Year 8
At or above curriculum level 54 52 47
Less than one year behind curriculum level 16 16 10
More than one year behind curriculum level 30 32 43

About the assessment

  • Data was collected via an online assessment implemented by classroom teachers in October 2023. Selection was random from among state and state-integrated English-medium schools across New Zealand (44 schools at Years 3 and 6, and 42 schools at Year 8). Around 900 students were assessed at each year level. In 2024 and thereafter, the sample will be 80 schools and approximately 2,000students at each year level.
  • The assessment of Years 3, 6, and 8 corresponds with the end of the first three phases of learning described in the refreshed New Zealand curriculum.
Table 2: What the assessments showed that students understood, knew and could do (abbreviated version of insights; full version found in downloadable A3s)

Assessment Students could: Students had less success with:
Year 3 Word Recognition recognise common words with vowel and consonant digraphs (e.g., shoes, chair). recognising homophones (e.g., whether/weather) and uncommon vowel sounds (e.g., warm for worm, seize for scissors).
Reading Comprehension retrieve information easier than making inferences. responding to texts in less familiar contexts and non-straightforward structures (e.g., poem stanzas).
Year 6Vocabulary choose contextually appropriate words, though not always synonymous with the intended word. replacing words that were less likely to be part of their familiar, everyday language (e.g., genuine, theme, compact).
Reading comprehension understand fictional texts easier than historical or biographical texts. making inferences more easily when they could draw on prior knowledge (e.g., moa are extinct) but struggled with inferences requiring close reading and synthesis in unfamiliar contexts (e.g., life of Hone Tūwhare).
Year 8Vocabulary
  • choose contextually appropriate words that were not exact synonyms of the intended replacements.
  • Successfully replace words related to world events or school contexts (e.g., perseverance, unprotected).
 replacing less familiar words (e.g., juts, alleged) and often opted for colloquial terms (e.g., challenging for treacherous).
Reading comprehension
  • Retrieve information easier than both local and complex inferencing.
  • Successfully comprehended various types of texts, including narratives, poems, and science-based non-fiction.
 interpreting, integrating, critiquing, and evaluating were generally less difficult than inferencing questions.

More information is available on the website of the Curriculum Insights and Progress Study.

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