What we know about maths achievement: New Zealand Year 5 and Year 9 results from TIMSS 2014/15 Publications
Publication Details
This flyer briefly summarises student maths achievement results from New Zealand’s participation in TIMSS 2014/15. It includes information about high and low achievers, relative strengths and weaknesses, and looks at the relationship to the New Zealand Curriculum. The achievement of boys and girls, students in different ethnic groupings, and students in different socio-economic groupings is also presented.
Author(s): Robyn Caygill, Vafa Hanlar and Charlotte Harris-Miller, Comparative Education Research Unit, Ministry of Education
Date Published: November 2016
Introduction
New Zealand Year 5 and Year 9 results from TIMSS 2014/151
Overall achievement
- Since the last cycle of TIMSS in 2010/11, Year 5 and Year 9 students' average2 maths scores haven't changed.3
- TIMSS started 20 years ago and in this last cycle, Year 5 students' average maths score was higher than in 1994/95. Year 9 students' average score has moved around over time, but in 2014/15 it was the same as 1994/95.
- Year 5 students' average maths score in TIMSS 2014/15 was higher than 15 other countries, but lower than 33, including most of the countries we usually compare ourselves with (such as Singapore, Australia, England, and the United States).
- In Year 9, students' average maths achievement was higher than 18 other countries, but lower than 17 (including Singapore, Australia, England, and the United States).
- Although there were only 39 countries at the Year 9 level, compared with 49 at Year 5, New Zealand ranked relatively better at Year 9 than Year 5.
High and low achievers
- Some students achieved scores much higher than the average, and some achieved much lower. TIMSS provides several ways we can describe achievement to help understand the maths abilities of students.
- At both year levels, the range between the students who scored highly and those who scored low was wider in 2014/15 than it was in 2010/11. New Zealand's ranges were bigger than many other countries.
- Students who are "advanced" are those who score at the top levels and can do the most complex and difficult maths questions in the TIMSS assessment.
- In New Zealand, 6% of Year 5 and Year 9 students were "advanced" in maths.
- This puts New Zealand around the middle when the proportion of "advanced" performers is compared between countries.
- There were more "advanced" Year 5 students in 2014/15 than in 2010/11.
- At the other end of the continuum are students who performed below "low". These students did not correctly complete the simple, basic questions that we would expect them to do at their year levels.
- In New Zealand, 16% of Year 5 students and 15% of Year 9 students had scores that were below "low".
- These are large proportions of students, compared to other countries.
- For Year 9 students this proportion is larger now than it was in 1994/95.
Strengths and weaknesses
- In New Zealand, Year 5 and Year 9 students did best on statistics-related questions. Statistics-related topics were the area of maths most likely to be covered by their teachers in lessons.
- Year 5 and Year 9 students performed better on questions that required them to use reasoning, compared with ones that required them to show their knowledge.
TIMSS and the New Zealand Curriculum
- Although TIMSS is an international education assessment, it is designed to use questions that "match" with different countries curricula, as well as some questions that may be harder or easier. This means that we can look at just the questions that fit with each country's expectations and see how students achieved against those.
- Less than half of the students were working at the desired level of mathematics in the New Zealand Curriculum by the end of 2014 (when the test was administered). This is more of an issue at the Year 9 level than Year 5. Not surprisingly, those students whose classes were working at higher levels of the curriculum had higher maths achievement in TIMSS.
- When looking at only the TIMSS questions which fit with New Zealand curriculum expectations, the average student answered just under half of these questions correctly. This was true for both Year 5 and Year 9 students.
Girls and boys
- At both Year 5 and Year 9, boys and girls had the same average maths achievement, but boys had a wider range of scores.
- The average Year 5 maths score for boys and girls in 2014/15 was significantly higher than it was 20 years ago.
- The Year 9 boys' maths score has not changed much since 1994/95.
- Year 9 girls' average maths score decreased significantly between 2002/03 and 2010/11. However, since then they had a strong increase and their average maths score is now the same as it was 20 years ago.
- More Year 9 girls were high achievers in mathematics in 2014/15, compared to 2010/11.
- New Zealand boys and girls had similar maths scores across almost all TIMSS cycles. The only exception was in 2010/11, when Year 9 girls achieved lower than Year 9 boys.
Ethnicity
- Nearly a quarter of Year 5 students and a fifth of Year 9 students identified themselves as belonging in more than one ethnic grouping in TIMSS (Māori, Pasifika, Pākehā/European, Asian, and Other).
- All of the ethnic groupings had students who performed at advanced levels and below the "low" level, and there was a wide range of scores in all groupings as well.
- There was no change in average scores between the last cycle and 2014/15 for any ethnic grouping.
- Māori had a lower average score than non-Māori, and Pasifika had a lower average score than non-Pasifika. When the effects of socio-economic factors are taken into account, the gaps in achievement scores narrow.
Socio-economic status
- TIMSS allows us to consider some indictors of SES and how they relate to achievement. Students who come from less wealthy communities and schools can, and do, achieve well.
- Students in homes where there were lots of resources to support their learning had higher TIMSS maths scores than students whose homes had fewer resources.
- Maths achievement was, on average, higher for students in schools that had larger proportions of economically advantaged students (which indicate they are schools in more affluent communities).
- In New Zealand, the difference between average scores for Year 5 students in more affluent and less affluent schools was larger than most other countries in the study. In Year 9 there were a few more countries that had larger differences, but we were still higher than the international average.
Footnotes
- TIMSS 2014/15 was conducted in New Zealand and other southern hemisphere countries in 2014, and in northern hemisphere countries in 2015.
- In this case 'average' refers to the mean.
- If the difference between the scores is not statistically significant, this is reported as 'no change' or 'the same/ similar'. Statistical significance means we are 95% certain that we would get the same results if the study was repeated with a different sample.
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